BOOK OF 
 OYHOODS 
 
 "haucer toMacDowell 
 
 UGENIE M. FRYER 
 
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 2U GJottrell ilntueraitij 
 3tt)aca, S. f. 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 CT 107.F7 
 
 A book of boyhoods, Chaucer to MacDowell 
 
 3 1924 014 084 606 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014084606 
 
A BOOK OF BOYHOODS 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE HILL-TOWNS OF FRANCE 
 
 Fully illustrated with 50 pen-and-ink 
 
 drawings by ROY L. HILTON and 
 
 over 25 fine photo-engravings 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
A BOOK OF 
 BOYHOODS 
 
 Chaucer to MacDowell 
 
 BY 
 
 EUGENIE M. FRYER 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE HILL-TOWNS OP PRANCE" 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 681 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
Copyright, 1920, 
 BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 CTfol 
 FT 
 
 @ 1111 
 
 Printed In the United States of America 
 
TO 
 
 H. L. M. 
 
 AND 
 
 A. M. B. 
 
 WHOSE FRIENDSHIP HAS BEEN 
 MY INSPDJATION. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Preeminent among the fallacies of modern education 
 is the belittling of imagination. Imagination is decried as 
 a menace to practical action so necessary in our modern 
 life, it being reckoned as the perquisite of the idle 
 dreamer, the sentimentalist who accomplishes nothing, 
 his dreams fading unrealized. Yet, scanning the pages 
 of history, do we not find this conception a fallacy, a half- 
 baked truth? Imagination is the well-spring of vision 
 without which a man's soul is blind. Whether he be 
 painter or statesman, musician or soldier, poet or finan- 
 cier, his power to reach the heights is dependant upon his 
 power to vision the future, to see into the soul of things, 
 to conceive the great ideas he is to resolve into realities. 
 This is what I have tried to portray in these Boyhoods, 
 covering in time, six centuries, and depicting a variety 
 of professional types. In all of these one finds that the 
 well-spring of vision has the same source — imagination. 
 It is the hall-mark of greatness even though it demands 
 other qualities to counterbalance it. The man is father 
 of the boy no less than the boy is father of the man, 
 his future hung against the background of his heritage 
 and tradition, even as his roots are struck deep into the 
 soil from which he sprang. True education will foster 
 rather than break down these gifts of inheritance, will 
 mould natural tendencies into purposefulness not by sup- 
 pression, but by guiding them toward the fulness and 
 beauty of perfection, that unity in variety which makes 
 
 vii 
 
viii Foreword 
 
 for the ideal character as well as for the well-rounded 
 genius. 
 
 I have in mind a new series covering an earlier period 
 and including such men as King Alfred, Richard Cceur 
 de Lion, Edward the Black Prince, Charlemagne, Roland, 
 The Cid, Saint Louis and so bringing the series up to 
 Chaucer's time where this present series begins. Later 
 on, perhaps, I might devote a series to Boyhoods of the 
 present time. 
 
 Four of these Boyhoods have already appeared, one in 
 "The Forum," three in "Childhood." For the privilege 
 of including them in this present volume, I desire to 
 register here my thanks to the Editor of "The Forum" 
 and the Editor and Publisher of "Childhood." 
 
 My thanks are also due Mrs. Edward MacDowell for 
 her courtesy in giving me material for my boyhood sketch 
 of Mr. MacDowell. 
 
 Eugenie M. Fryer. 
 "Farleigh," 
 
 September 15, 1919. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Chaucer — The Boy for a King's Delight i 
 (1340-1400) 
 
 II. Leonardo da Vinci — The Boy oe the 
 
 Renaissance 12 
 
 (1452-1519) 
 
 III. Balboa — The Boy Discoverer oe the 
 
 Pacific 22 
 
 (1475-1517) 
 
 IV. Drake — The Sailor Boy of Devon . . 34 
 
 (iS39-iS9S) 
 
 V. Raleigh — The Boy Discoverer .... 42 
 (1552-1618) 
 
 VI. — La Salle — The Boy Colonizer .... 51 
 (1643-1687) 
 
 VII. John Woolman — The Quaker Boy . . 62 
 (1720-1773) 
 
 VIII. Washington — The Boy Founder of Ameri- 
 can Liberty 70 
 
 (1732-1799) 
 
 IX. Chatterton — The Marvellous Boy . . 82 
 (1752-1770) 
 
 X. Blake — The Boy of the London Streets 108 
 (1757-1828) 
 
 XI. Hamilton — The Boy oe St. Kitts ... 117 
 (1757-1804) 
 
 XII. Nelson — The Boy oe Trafalgar . . , . 127 
 (1758-1805) 
 ix 
 
x Table of Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XIII. Burns — The Boy of the Scottish Moors 137 
 
 (1759-1796) 
 
 XIV. Wordsworth — The Boy of Winander . 146 
 
 (1770-1850) 
 
 XV. Lamb — The Blue Coat Boy 154 
 
 (1775-1835) 
 
 XVI. Keats — The Boy of Greece .... 162 
 (1795-1821) 
 
 XVII. Lincoln — The Boy of Democracy . . . 173 
 (1819-1865) 
 
 XVIII. Huxley — The Boy of Evolution . . . 184 
 (1825-1895) 
 
 XIX. James J. Hill — The Boy Pioneer of the 
 
 Northwest 195 
 
 (1838-1916) 
 
 XX. Pater — The Boy Lover of Mystic Beauty 205 
 (1839-1894) 
 
 XXI. Rodin — The Boy of Cosmic Symbolism . 218 
 (1840-1917) 
 
 XXII. Stevenson — The Boy of Treasure Island 230 
 (1850-1894) 
 
 XXIII. Kitchener — The Boy of Khartoum . . 239 
 
 (1850-1916) 
 
 XXIV. Foch — The Boy Mystic of Gascony . . 248 
 
 (1851- ) 
 
 XXV. Joffre — The Boy of New France . . 259 
 (1852- ) 
 
 XXVI. Brcsiloff — The Boy of the Caucasus . 269 
 (1856-1918) (?) 
 
 XXVII. Roosevelt — The Boy American of Vision 280 
 (1858-1919) 
 
 XXVIII. MacDowell — The Boy Creator of Ameri- 
 can Music 291 
 
A BOOK OF BOYHOODS 
 
A BOOK OF BOYHOODS 
 
 CHAUCER— THE BOY FOR A KING'S DELIGHT 
 
 THE soft beauty of a late June day of the year 1359 
 flushed the western sky, the delicate tints reflectant 
 in the slow.-moving Thames winding its way through 
 London's heart toward the sea. Upon the quay, all quiet 
 now, the day's trafficking over, stood a young man close 
 to the water's edge, gazing up the river toward London 
 Bridge where Dutch crawls swung in the tideway, and 
 the cry of boatmen came to him on the evening breeze. 
 His tall, splendid figure was silhouetted against the sky, 
 the loose frock of camlet reaching to the knees, the wide 
 sleeves fastened at the wrist becoming him, the red hose 
 and horned shoes giving the needed touch of color. He 
 had slipped the peaked cap from his fair hair, the dying 
 sun turning it to gold, a gold reflectant too in his deep, 
 sparkling eyes. The broad high brow bespoke great 
 sanity, a balance off-setting the passionate, full-red lips 
 and the glow of the dreamer, a poet's vision lingering in 
 his blue eyes even now as he gazed thoughtfully up and 
 down the river, his gaze resting longest, perhaps, on the 
 Tower from whence he had but lately come from his in- 
 terview with the King; for the King was soon setting 
 forth on his last invasion in person of France, and young 
 Geoffrey Chaucer was to be of that goodly company, 
 eager to win his spurs. 
 It was not the first time Edward III. had sent for the 
 
2 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 vintner's son. Indeed it was he who had dubbed him a 
 boy for a king's delight the first time he had seen him, a 
 golden-haired, merry-eyed boy waiting in the courtyard 
 of the palace for his father, who had been summoned 
 thither on some business of the King's. The King had 
 watched the boy from a window looking out upon the 
 courtyard, bandying wit with the men-at-arms lounging 
 about the guardroom door, and his merry laughter had 
 floated up to the royal apartments. 
 
 "Dost know the lad, John ?" Edward had asked of the 
 vintner standing waiting the King's pleasure. "He is a 
 merry fellow." 
 
 John Chaucer had flushed with pleasure at the King's 
 praise. 
 
 "My son Geoffrey, Sire, and a good lad." 
 
 "A stripling built to break a knightly lance in the tilt 
 yard, and to bear himself well in the doing," the King 
 commented shrewdly. 
 
 "He would bear arms, Sire, in the King's service." 
 
 "So he shall, honest John. A squire's training he shall 
 have. Here at the palace he shall learn to hold a lance 
 and wield a sword that he may later serve his King 
 in France." 
 
 Thus it came about that the lad had been much at the 
 Tower, learning the manual of arms, spending much time 
 at manly exercises tending to toughen and strengthen him 
 that he might become inured to hardships for his life of 
 service as a soldier of the King. Now and again the King 
 would pause as he rode by where the young squires 
 were exercising, to speak with the Boy ; for he delighted 
 in this merry, blue-eyed boy, who answered him with such 
 joyous fearlessness, such native honesty, qualities the 
 King was quick to recognize. Edward III. was of those 
 men of vision who value integrity as the foundation of 
 
The Boy for a King's Delight 3 
 
 greatness, wit and cleverness being but the adjuncts wing- 
 ing men to the heights. The loyalty of unquestioning 
 service John Chaucer had given his King, as his father 
 before him; and Edward saw in the son Geoffrey, the 
 embryo of a like service. 
 
 Thus Geoffrey had grown up surrounded by the at- 
 mosphere of courts and courtly manners, this king's 
 messenger to be, to have need of the gentle arts of speech 
 as well as a knowledge of men and affairs. He came in 
 contact even with the young princes, especially John 
 whose friendship was to be his always, this John of 
 Gaunt whose brother-in-law in after-years he was to 
 become. Yet this contact with the court did not cut him 
 off from the humble Thames Street home where his 
 father the vintner dealt in the wines of Aquitaine, brewed 
 his own beer and, from time to time, replenished the cel- 
 lars of the King. The Boy loved his home, and his 
 mother Agnes, of gentle birth, kinswoman and heiress of 
 one Hamo de Compton, citizen and moneyer of London, 
 gave to the lad her quick, passionate nature, her vivid 
 imagination, French in its delicacy of coloring, that was 
 to offset the intellectual coolness, the critical acumen so 
 characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon heritage that was his 
 also. 
 
 Geoffrey loved life and people, the people in the narrow 
 streets or along the river front exhilarating him, while 
 his keen, observant mind jotted them down in the note 
 book of his mind, afterwards to be immortalized in the 
 rich embroidery of the Canterbury Tales. He loved the 
 life along the river with its mingling of foreign tongues, 
 this mart of commerce the pathway to the sea and the un- 
 known worlds lying beyond. With these river folk he 
 had always mingled, mariners and merchants, vintners 
 and fishmongers of Billingsgate, cheese venders in the 
 
4 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 market stalls and stout-Hmbed armorers, studying them, 
 and through them learning of life so varied yet in its 
 fundamentals the same. There opened before him the 
 whole gamut of human emotion, its brutality, its struggle, 
 its joy, its tragedy, its swift touches of unsuspected fine- 
 ness flashing out as a jewel of a sudden catching the 
 sun's ray. He saw life's injustices and inequalities, and 
 the spirit of Runnymede flared up in him, remembering 
 the court with its be jeweled courtiers, until gradually 
 irony had tinged the humor of this lad of nineteen stand- 
 ing on the quay, who was yet already a man in the King's 
 service. 
 
 It was more than the beauty of the scene gripping him 
 as Geoffrey stood there on the quay. His eye swept the 
 river noting the ever increasing number of ships riding 
 in the roadway, and with his merchant's instinct, he rec- 
 ognized the dawning of the commercial greatness of 
 England, that would keep pace, if it would not outstrip, 
 her aggrandizement by conquest of arms. It was an age 
 of great men, not only those of noble birth, but of men 
 who, like himself, were of the people, yet whose talents 
 made them a force in the life of the nation ; the beginning, 
 really, of the vigorous growth of the state, that unity in 
 variety developing out of the recognition of the need of 
 every man to make a well-rounded whole. The times were 
 tempered with democracy, as witnessed by the outbreaks 
 that had won the Magna Charta at Runnymede, and had 
 since then kept it in remembrance. Shrewdly this young 
 man, full of the fire of the poet, yet so practical, realized 
 that he was standing on the verge of a great age, knew 
 himself as of the Age that in a sense was to lay the 
 stanch foundation stones of the Age of Elizabeth when 
 England would of a truth spread her wings proclaimed 
 champion of freedom, of thought, of speech, of the seas, 
 
The Boy for a King's Delight 5 
 
 a trust she would hold and guard inviolate throughout the 
 centuries. 
 
 Geoffrey's power to triumph over his birth and station, 
 then, was not the result of mere good fortune, nor of 
 royal favor, though he had enjoyed both. It was rather 
 the force of his personality towering as it did above his 
 fellows, singling him out for a life of service to his King, 
 and to England whom he loved with all his soul. To 
 this end, the favor of the King had aided him, opening to 
 him opportunities of culture otherwise impossible; for 
 Edward III. visioned for England only the service of the 
 best, men of brains as well as of birth and wealth. He 
 demanded for England a single-hearted service devoid of 
 personal self-interest, a service that counted not the cost 
 so England benefit. So it came about, that the King 
 granted Geoffrey a certain amount of intercourse with the 
 young princes, the priest who taught them becoming his 
 tutor likewise. From this white-haired priest he had 
 learned not only of Holy Church, but Greek and Latin, 
 and with that knowledge of classical languages, the whole 
 classical tradition became to him an open book wherein 
 he might read and so learn of those ancient worlds of 
 Greece and Rome, of myth and legend all intertwined,, 
 with their history so full of a tradition rich and noble 
 upon which really his own Anglo-Saxon traditions were 
 founded. The old priest loved the bright-eyed boy, and 
 in the stories of the saints he had introduced tales of 
 Homer, of Greek mythology and classical tradition, catch- 
 ing the imagination of the lad. For hours together, Geof- 
 frey would sit by the open hearth, listening to the old man 
 spin for him tales of ancient lore, kindling in the lad a 
 desire to do brave deeds, to take his part with other men, 
 a spirit of the quest awakening in him, driving him on- 
 ward to the end. 
 
6 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 "A man must be inspired by a spirit of the quest, 
 Geoffrey," Father Anselm had said to him one day as 
 they paced the courtyard together ; "but it must be a quest 
 as of the Holy Grail." 
 
 "I would serve England and the King, Father," Geof- 
 frey had flashed back. 
 
 "Aye, truly, remembering always the King of Kings, 
 Boy. That is the test." 
 
 Life had unfolded itself to the Boy as a pageant, a 
 thing of rich coloring, of armored knights and splendidly 
 bedizened ladies, of men-at-arms and banners floating in 
 the breeze, set ever against both the ritual of Holy 
 Church, and the motley crowd who cheered or scowled 
 beside the castle gate as the mood for the moment swayed 
 them; this varied throng so far apart in ideals and out- 
 look yet as inevitably interwoven as a piece of tapestry, 
 the warp and woof of their destinies interdependent, to 
 make whole the fair picture of their country's welfare. 
 Thus in after-years, Geoffrey was to paint them in all the 
 majesty of English verse, this vintner's son's greatest ser- 
 vice to England, his record in poetry of the times in 
 which he lived, striving with conscious art to tell his 
 tales of Canterbury and the like, his heritage of literary 
 traditions to influence him always; for he shared in the 
 intellectual wealth of the past, giving him background, a 
 sense of proportion otherwise impossible. He who was to 
 be the father of English poetry, possessed nothing of 
 creative impulse. He knew at what he aimed to accom- 
 plish, projecting his own personality into his work, seiz- 
 ing the salient points, presenting life, pulsating, colorful, 
 drenched in the soft beauty that is forever England; 
 interpreting subtly those inner forces and emotions re- 
 sponsible for the outward trend of the times in which 
 he lived. It was the poet in the Boy visioning great 
 
The Boy for a King's Delight 7 
 
 things for England, things that the shrewd business side 
 of his mind would help to resolve into reality. 
 
 Yet the Boy loved his world of romance, that world of 
 chivalry overshadowing still the commercial side of life, 
 tingeing it with its picturesqueness and color. Life was 
 still an adventure, its commercialism caught in beauty, the 
 guilds exuding beauty even as they breathed likewise that 
 spirit of democracy, that freedom born of Runnymede in- 
 herent in the race. 
 
 A lover of sunlight, of nature, the Boy had always 
 been, and his verse as his heart sang of April, of birds 
 and a world of gold, bird notes throbbing through his 
 tales as sunshine through forest trees. His joyous spirit, 
 his humor flashed forth even at his own expense. Yet 
 his joyousness was touched by deeper notes. This Boy, 
 who knew the life of the river front as well as of the 
 Tower, of the mob as well as of the nobility, pondered 
 much upon life, its wide contrasts, the "sombre sides of 
 man's destiny," his going forth to his work and to his 
 labor — until the evening," a questioning wistfulness the 
 deeper for its setting of sun-shot gaiety and humor. His 
 whole nature, so joyous and so gay, possessed too, that 
 quality of tenderness, so characteristic of him always, 
 especially in his attitude toward women. Reverence for 
 women had been part of his knightly training; instilled 
 into him by the white-haired priest who had tutored him 
 at the palace, that reverence which had its inception in the 
 worship of Our Lady, a reverence imparted by Holy 
 Church developing this Age of Chivalry in which the lad 
 lived. His simple faith, his reverent love of women had 
 been taught him first at his mother's knee, her gentleness 
 and flower-like beauty commanding the Boy's passionate 
 loyalty, setting his ideal of womanhood very high. 
 
 "Guard a woman as thou would'st thine honor, Geof- 
 
8 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 frey," she had said to him one day, and the words had 
 sunk deep, leaving their impress upon the Boy. How 
 deep an impress they had made, was demonstrated not 
 long after by his beating a Franciscan friar in the London 
 streets, he having caught the friar making too free with 
 a lass near the Three Tuns Tavern. Two shillings his 
 chivalry had cost him, but the Boy, nothing daunted, had 
 sworn to offend again in like manner if occasion de- 
 manded. 
 
 Geoffrey's tender sympathy with life, revealed his love 
 of humanity, a human, tolerant attitude toward life draw- 
 ing men to him. His understanding found quick response 
 among children, and many a day he sat surrounded by 
 them in castle hall or by the river bank, weaving them 
 tales out of his imagination. Love to the Boy, was the 
 conqueror of all things; love was to him the emblem of 
 all things pure and noble, the ideal that was to guide him 
 across the quick-sands of life. He was to meet the reali- 
 ties of life boldly, dominating them, preserving his ideal- 
 ism even though the ironies of life, its seeming futility, 
 its tragedy, its sordidness met him at every turn. He 
 knew first hand the soil, the grimy sweat of the crowd ; 
 but he knew also the fineness of soul lying unstained 
 beneath. 
 
 As the sunset deepened, the Boy caught too the deep- 
 ening beauty, a throbbing beauty gripping his very soul. 
 His mind flooded back to his childhood, the house on 
 Thames Street that he had known since babyhood, stand- 
 ing beside the tiny Wallbrook, rising in the fens beyond 
 Moorgate, and so tracing its way to the Thames and to 
 the sea, this insignificant tributary as necessary to the 
 river as the humblest mariner to his ship or the yeoman 
 peasant to the nation. These fens beyond Moorgate 
 possessed a certain quality of romance for the lad, their 
 
The Boy for a King's Delight 9 
 
 gray desolate stretches suggestive of adventure, of the 
 abode of cutthroats and robber bands stealing like 
 shadows from the London streets and highways to hide 
 their booty in this haunted marshland. Many a day the 
 lad had followed the stream to the edge of those wild, 
 desolate fens, drawn thither by a beauty revealed only 
 to the poet soul, — the beauty of purpling mists as the 
 dawn flushed their grayness, turning them to gold ; or at 
 sundown when the gossamer web gathered to itself the 
 shimmering gold-dust of the west, to slowly fade in the 
 blue, northern twilight. It was a land of adventure to 
 the Boy, these fens, a voyage into an unknown country, 
 where in the gray quiet, broken perhaps by the cry of a 
 startled bird, the Boy gathered his dreams about him, his 
 soul steeped in beauty, a beauty through which people 
 moved; for the Boy's world of imagination was always 
 peopled, human nature that which held and delighted him 
 most, human nature that ever changing was yet ever the 
 same, the problem upon which he loved to dwell; the 
 Anglo-Saxon in him tending to moralizing and philoso- 
 phizing upon life, upon the men and women who, like 
 himself, made up its sum. 
 
 The Boy's thoughts flooded back to his grandfather, 
 Robert le Chaucer who in 1310 had been appointed one 
 of the Collectors of the Port of London, new customs 
 levied upon wines having been granted the merchants of 
 Aquitaine ; this service of the king to be inherited by his 
 father, who, two years before the Boy's birth, had with 
 forty-five others crossed the seas with the King to serve 
 with him in France. Now after these years of noviciate, 
 he too was setting forth, this time to fight for his King 
 and merry England, to give his life, if need be, proving 
 himself worthy of the spurs he hoped to win. For two 
 years he had been in the service of a noble house, his 
 
io A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 whole life a preparation for this moment now at hand. 
 How would he acquit himself, he wondered? His blue 
 eyes caught fire at the thought of the unknown adventure 
 lying beyond the horizon. Action he loved, and before 
 the campaign was over, he would, he knew, have drawn 
 his sword in good earnest for the King. Life lay before 
 him, a gleaming road that, perforce, would at times lead 
 through shadowed ways, a road as crowded as his pil- 
 grims' way to Canterbury, and leading to a like goal ; for 
 he had been called to a life of service, a life to be spent 
 in the service of England and his King, now as a soldier, 
 now on some delicate foreign mission to Italy or to 
 France, demanding of him, trusted envoy of the king, 
 the exercise of all his powers in its accomplishment; 
 bringing him, likewise, into contact with those of high 
 estate, the greatest minds of his age, kings, nobles and 
 the cultured circle found in courts headed by noble 
 Petrarch, men with whom he would stand as equal, Eng- 
 land to be proud of her mighty poet, the vintner's son. 
 In riper years, he was destined to appear in numerous 
 roles, as Controller of Customs, as a knight in Parliament, 
 as Clerk of the King's Works. 
 
 Standing on the quay in the fading light, Geoffrey 
 saw his life stretching out, the avenues of the world open- 
 ing before him, a life rich, as variegated as a pageant 
 through which he was to move and later to immortalize in 
 verse, a vision of England growing and expanding, blos- 
 soming in this Golden Age of Chivalry of which he was 
 to be so vital a part. The forerunner of all that noble 
 throng of poets who were to come after, he would be 
 the link between the old and the new, one who knew 
 life in all its phases, yet who to the end' would keep 
 his faith, his purity, his sweetness, a personality that 
 would stand out throughout the ages as representative 
 
The Boy for a King's Delight n 
 
 of the blending of democracy and nobility, as triumph- 
 ing over birth and station in an age when democracy 
 was at the dawning. 
 
 With a last sweep of his deep blue eyes up and down 
 the river that he loved, Geoffrey Chaucer with a smile 
 playing about his full, handsome lips, turned back toward 
 the timbered house on Thames Street to take farewell of 
 his father and mother before he set forth on his voyage 
 to France that was to open for him the gateway of his 
 dreams, dreams holding in them the spirit of the quest. 
 
LEONARDO DA VINCI— THE BOY OF THE 
 RENAISSANCE v 
 
 THERE had been a stir in the bottega of Andrea 
 Verrocchio that July morning of the year 1472 when 
 the Boy Leonardo, laying aside his brush and palette, had 
 declared that the angel was finished. The two other 
 boys in the studio, Perugino and Botticelli, had crowded 
 about him full of shy admiration for their friend* 
 
 "The maestro will be proud of thee," Perugino said, 
 his voice vibrant. "Thou hast caught Andrea's spirit." 
 
 Leonardo shaking them off gently, stepped back from 
 the easel, studying the panel with the detached air of a 
 full-blown critic. His oval face was flushed, his deep- 
 set eyes dark and glowing. With a quick, nervous move- 
 ment he pushed back his thick black hair from his fore- 
 head. 
 
 "Not really finished, Pietro mio. An artist's work is 
 never done. Yet, I cannot at present carry it further." 
 
 For a long time the Boy studied the figure of the angel 
 holding the sacred vestments in his hand, forgetful seem- 
 ingly of his companions, who presently slipped away to 
 their easels, lest the maestro find them idle on his return. 
 
 "He has the look of a maestro already," Sandro 
 laughed. 
 
 "We shall all be masters some day," Leonardo flung 
 back, seeking the window overlooking the valley of the 
 Arno. 
 
 The studio was close, the July heat penetrating the low- 
 curving tiled roof fiercely. Leonardo loved the view 
 
 12 
 
The Boy of the Renaissance 13 
 
 from that window. It faced the mountains, in whose 
 folds Vinci perched, clinging to the western slope of 
 Monte Albano, the only home he had ever known until 
 his father had brought him two years before to Florence 
 and Verrocchio. A simple home it had been, yet the Boy 
 loved it with all the passionate intensity of his nature, 
 that fierce intensity so characteristic of mountain folk. 
 As in a dream, he watched the Arno winding down 
 through the plain, hot and shimmering in the burning 
 July heat. The cries of the city came up to him, and the 
 stifling atmosphere, heavy with the stench of sodden 
 streets, filled him with nostalgia for the clean, cool wind 
 sweeping down from the snow-capped Apennines. 
 Flushed grapevines and the gray-green of olive trees, 
 wind-blown and craggy, clambering up the hillocks, rising 
 abruptly from the heat-baked plain, called to him as did 
 the grim, bare mountain-tops of the far distant massif 
 looming up into a cloud-hung sky. 
 
 "Art dreaming of Madonnas thou wilt paint, Leon- 
 ardo?" 
 
 Leonardo started, brought back from his world of 
 dreams to face Sandro's laughing blue eyes. 
 
 "Madonnas in small doses for me, Sandro. I leave 
 them to thee and the pious Pietro yonder." 
 
 Sandro shook his tawny head. 
 
 "Spring and the wood nymphs, and the tales of Boc- 
 caccio I would paint." 
 
 "Hast read Boccaccio?" Pietro asked wonderingly. 
 
 "Aye, beneath my tunic. I cannot stomach too con- 
 stant a diet of the saints either." 
 
 "If I believed thy words, I could picture thee some day 
 in Hell," Pietro answered, crossing himself. 
 
 Sandro's white teeth gleamed. 
 
 "Venus rising from the sea is what I picture. I wor- 
 
14 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 ship Beauty rather than the saints. And thou, Leonardo?" 
 "I seek knowledge above all things, Sandro ; the why 
 and the wherefore of things; the principle by which 
 they move and have their being. Painting, color, yes ; but 
 I would design, make plans, building with my hands. I 
 would make the desert of the Arno blossom, I would 
 model even as the maestro, making the stone, the bronze 
 to live. Thou, Pietro, will be known for thy Madonnas 
 and thy crucifixions as Sandro for his wood nymphs and 
 
 his goddess Beauty ; while I a thousand different arts 
 
 will represent me, never twice the same." He laughed a 
 rich, joyous laugh, turning back to his contemplation of 
 the scene from the window, his active brain alive to its 
 beauty, yet already busy determining where the course of 
 the Arno could best be changed to make possible a canal 
 from Florence to Pisa. 
 
 Quiet fell upon the studio, Sandro and Pietro absorbed 
 once more in the painting assigned them, Leonardo lost 
 in his dreams. His thoughts flew back to his grandfather, 
 the handsome, white-haired Ser Antonio in whose house- 
 hold he had grown up; for his father, notary to the 
 Signoria of Florence, had been much from home, leaving 
 the Boy in his father's care. The old man had mothered 
 the Boy with deep tenderness and love, recognizing the 
 genius slumbering in him; desirous too, perhaps, to give 
 not only his name to this left-handed heir of the house, 
 but if possible to make up to him for the mother love he 
 was never really to know. When only a tiny lad of five, 
 Leonardo's father had brought him down from Anchiano, 
 the village above Vinci where his mother lived, to be 
 legitimatized and brought up as his acknowledged son 
 and heir. Yet to this peasant mother of his, Catarina, 
 the Boy gave a loyal love and devotion, guarding her 
 fair name with the knightly chivalry that was his heritage 
 
The Boy of the Renaissance 15 
 
 likewise, this strain of peasant blood, giving to the lad a 
 robust sturdiness of body and character, a vigor of mind, 
 a vitality coupled with grace and dexterity, a spirit 
 courageous and royal allied with tremendous physical 
 strength, making for true moral soundness of soul. It 
 was not until he was twelve that he had learned the story 
 of his birth, and his love had but burned the fiercer for 
 his mother who had suffered shame and humiliation. She 
 was but a girl of sixteen, beautiful as a wild rose, win- 
 ning the heart of the Boy's father when the handsome 
 young notary had paused on his way to Vinci, whither 
 he was going to visit his father, to quench his thirst at 
 the village inn. There in this resort of shepherds and 
 muleteers, he had found the orphan waiting upon the 
 rude patrons who frequented the inn, her beauty setting 
 him all aflame ; the fruit of their summer's day of happi- 
 ness, the Boy Leonardo, who was, to express in his ver- 
 satility and universality the very essence of that Age of 
 Renaissance, an age of great beauty and of hideous 
 cruelty, of marvelous feats in engineering, architecture, 
 painting, and of decadence, of culture and of barbarism, 
 of faith and of sensuous paganism, an age as fair as 
 a petaled rose whose flushed loveliness yet hides the 
 canker of unfaith in its heart. 
 
 The country about Vinci was severe, yet laughing and 
 exuberant; rocky, yet bordered with interminable walls 
 trailed with roses; its villas laughing, gay with yellow 
 walls and green shutters, yet with life there a struggle 
 against poverty and the keen mountain winds swooping 
 down in winter into the valley. The Boy's nature was 
 reflectant of the soil from whence he sprang, his sombre- 
 ness offset by a gay exuberance, his fiery earnestness by 
 a cool, critical detachment, his high-strung, finely tuned 
 nature, by a nonchalance Roman in its temper, his mathe- 
 
16 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 matical exactness and logic by a deep mysticism Umbrian 
 in its sombre beauty. The bold spirit of the Boy reached 
 out to grasp that just beyond his reach ; a seeker ever, a 
 knight upon the quest for knowledge, an eagle whose 
 wide-stretched wings would bear him to the mountain 
 tops. 
 
 Standing by the window, the hot breeze of the plain 
 burning his face, he watched dreamily the pigeons flit to 
 and fro among the chimney pots until his imagination 
 took flight. With shining eyes he turned to his com- 
 panions. 
 
 "I have but to know and I shall have wings," he ex- 
 claimed, his voice tense. 
 
 "Thou art always on the wings of some fancy," Sandro 
 taunted him. 
 
 "Thou wilt not laugh, Sandro mio, when I fly away 
 free as any bird, leaving thee behind. Thou shalt see. 
 I have the plan in my head already." 
 
 "So long as thou leavest me Venus and my wood 
 nymphs," Sandro laughed back. 
 
 As a tiny lad at Vinci, Leonardo had loved to watch 
 birds , in flight, noting with exuberant joy the motion of 
 their wings. Since he had come to Florence, he had 
 many a time spent his last copper purchasing a caged 
 bird he had found for sale in the market place merely to 
 release it. He loved freedom with all the intensity of his 
 artist's nature, and it hurt him to see even a bird in cap- 
 tivity ; for his soul was as a bird, belonging to the space- 
 less ether, nor could his spirit brook restriction. 
 
 Extraordinary power, conjoined with remarkable fa- 
 cility, were his, his genius and peculiar ability enabling 
 him to master any subject to which he turned his atten- 
 tion, his grace and his beauty attracting men to him. 
 From babyhood drawing and modeling were his delight, 
 
The Boy of the Renaissance 17 
 
 and he had spent his days at Vinci absorbed in these 
 things he loved, and in music and mathematics also. Ser 
 Antonio encouraged the lad in these pursuits, recognizing 
 the budding genius of his grandson early. Forever the 
 Boy was drawing plans or making designs, design having 
 a special attraction for him. His wonderful memory and 
 keen power of observation enabled him to note every line 
 and movement of a bird's flight and to reproduce them. 
 His power of vision revealed to him the soul of things 
 that later he might interpret and resolve his dreams into 
 realities. In the winter evenings he would take his 'lute, 
 his grandfather's gift to him, and sitting by the fire with 
 his grandfather, he would sing to the old man in his clear 
 treble voice, improvising, often, both the verses and the 
 music, music bringing with it the fresh beauty of the 
 mountain torrent, suggestive, too, of the pungent odor of 
 thyme and of heather-strewn hills. In summer, the lad 
 had lived much in the open, wandering among the hills 
 he loved, spending whole days following the Arno up into 
 its wilder reaches, perchance meeting a shepherd on some 
 solitary slope, sharing his simple meal, or lying on his 
 back for hours gazing up into the hot, blue sky following 
 an eagle in its flight; making rough drawings as he 
 dreamed of the day when he too would soar free as a bird 
 knowing no fetters. This love of liberty was inherent 
 in the lad, part of his heritage from his peasant ancestors, 
 these freehold farmers proud of their independence, till- 
 ing the soil with loving care, a heritage to hand down as a 
 trust to their children, and their children's children, own- 
 ership lending dignity to their farmer's calling. Integ- 
 rity was the keynote of these sturdy farmers' character, 
 a simplicity and goodness making for sweetness and light, 
 a harmony and grace of soul that shone through their 
 bronzed, toil-worn faces. Patience, the infinite patience 
 
18 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 of unremitting toil, the Boy possessed likewise, love of 
 perfection a dominant characteristic of the artist in him ; 
 yet off-setting this, and seemingly antithetic, was an en- 
 thusiasm that tired easily, his eager mind straining ever 
 toward the new, this quality in him handed down to him 
 by his father, who was forever seeking new worlds to 
 conquer. The hardness of life, life as a grinding struggle 
 against want, with no comforts and little protection from 
 the bitter, ice-chilled winds the Boy had known also; 
 inuring him to hardship and the struggle for life in the 
 great world outside in which he was to take so vital a 
 part, stamping his personality upon this Age of Renais- 
 sance in which he lived, even as he was its product, its 
 most comprehensive expression. He possessed all the 
 complexity of the Age, yet also that infinite goodness of 
 the heart, his mother's gift to this her son of mighty in- 
 tellect, making for perfect balance, the Boy's intellect kept 
 aflame by the burning soul of him, his imagination vision- 
 ing and keeping clear the deeper reaches of his mind, as 
 a fresh wind sweeping down from his loved Apennines, 
 brings with it the purity of snow-clad heights touched 
 with sunset glow. A great catholic-loving soul, this Boy 
 of the Renaissance, whose broad-winged nature was as 
 the eagle he sought to follow, regal in its boldness, mag- 
 nanimous in its daring, a nature of such potentialities that 
 it was to realize great feats of architecture and engi- 
 neering, vision an aeroplane, absorb himself in the ab- 
 stracts of philosophy, delve deep into science, wield his 
 brush with the cunning of an artist cynic in the portrayal 
 of the men and women of that corrupt cultured world in 
 which he lived, but to slip into the realms of the sublime 
 as, with prophetic insight, he painted with a brush alive 
 with faith the Last Supper upon a monastery wall, the 
 
The Boy of the Renaissance 19 
 
 face of the Christ the vision of a man who has looked 
 on things divine. 
 
 A deep spirituality welled up in the Boy's nature, ex- 
 pressive later in the great paintings time was to guard 
 from its own and men's ruthlessness, giving a luminous- 
 ness, a soft ethereal quality to his paintings without de- 
 nuding them of his boldness, virility and clear-cut real- 
 ism, the recognition really, of the necessity of both to 
 obtain perfect roundness of expression, the fulness of a 
 well-balanced soul. Mysticism was as much a part of his 
 nature as the keen spareness of the scientist, or the cool, 
 unerring logic of the philosopher This scientific bent was 
 revealed early in the Boy, not only in his love of mathe- 
 matics and his power to master it, but in his analytic 
 quality of mind that rested unsatisfied until it had un- 
 folded the secrets of nature, the principles of things, the 
 hidden source of their generation and their birth. This 
 little lad of the Tuscan hills, was to be the first great link 
 between Archimedes and the modern scientist. To him 
 too was bequeathed that hall-mark of the great — soli- 
 tariness, a loneliness of soul, seeing that which others 
 could not see, craving that understanding and comrade- 
 ship so often sought, so rarely found. All the restlessness 
 of the Age the Boy possessed, his questing spirit delving 
 into things frowned down upon by Holy Church. Yet, 
 sure of his mission, his vision, he was to push on deaf to 
 maligning tongues, small crabbed souls, who, jealous of 
 his fame, or merely narrow of vision, pointed the finger 
 of scorn at him, some going so far as to whisper that he 
 was in league with the Evil One. To this Boy of the 
 Renaissance, knowledge went hand in hand with faith, 
 faith shining with fuller, greater radiance where knowl- 
 edge followed in its wake. Even among the boys of 
 
20 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 Vinci, Leonardo had been filled with loneliness of soul. 
 They loved his beauty and his gay, joyous spirit, but 
 they did not understand him. The things lying deep in 
 his soul he kept hidden, revealing only shyly to his grand- 
 father fragments of his rainbow-colored dreams. 
 
 Standing by the window, looking off across the tiled 
 roofs to the valley of the Arno, the Boy recalled the day 
 he had shown his drawings to his father. He thrilled 
 now at the joy in his father's face as he had looked at 
 them. 
 
 "Verrocchio must see these, lad. Thou hast talent. 
 Wouldst be an artist ?" , 
 
 "Si, Si, father," the Boy exclaimed, his dark eyes afire. 
 "A sculptor also.' 
 
 "Thou can't likewise model ?" 
 
 The lad snatched up a piece of clay lying to his hand, 
 and with deft fingers moulded the lump into a figure 
 quivering with life. 
 
 "To-morrow we go to Florence, Leonardo mio, to see 
 Verrocchio." 
 
 "To-morrow, father?" 
 
 Pietro nodded. 
 
 "If Verrocchio will have thee, thou wilt live in 
 Florence, Boy, hard by the studio." 
 
 "I must leave grandfather?" Tears welled up in the 
 dark eyes. 
 
 "That, Boy, is life. We must go ever forward, never 
 back. Thou hast been given talents to use, not throw 
 away. Thou hast a work to do." 
 
 Thus two years before Leonardo had entered Verroc- 
 chio's studio, two years of unremitting toil, yet years that 
 had lifted him to the heights. On that first morning his 
 master pictured for him with graphic clearness the road 
 of the artist. 
 
The Boy of the Renaissance 21 
 
 "Art prepared to work, Leonardo?" he had asked the 
 lad while he studied the Boy's drawings. "It is a road 
 rough and steep, but at its ending the heights still beckon." 
 
 "It is the way of the eagle, maestro. It is the way I 
 would follow." 
 
 Now, at the end of two years, the Boy had finished his 
 first piece of serious work, the figure of the angel the 
 master had entrusted to him to execute. Would it please 
 him, the Boy wondered dreamily as he followed the silver 
 thread of the winding Arno ? 
 
 "How now, Leonardo?" Verrocchio's voice rang out 
 sharply, startling the Boy from his dreams. "Thou hast 
 time to idle thus ? Dreams are for a summer's holiday." 
 
 "I but waited thy coming, Maestro," the Boy an- 
 swered quickly, his face flushing. "The angel, I can carry 
 no further." 
 
 Verrocchio turned to the panel, amazement gripping 
 him as he studied the Boy's work. 
 
 "Thou hast done well," he said after a long silence, 
 laying his hand on the lad's shoulder. "I am proud of 
 thee. Keep on and thou wilt yet outstrip thy fellows, 
 perhaps thy master." 
 
 Leonardo's gay laugh rang out. 
 
 "Maestro, thou dost make fun of me." 
 
 "Perhaps, Boy. Work, and I will teach thee all the 
 cunning of the brush I know. I love thee, lad, as if thou 
 wast my son. Now get thee gone to the river to swim, 
 thee and those two rascals yonder." 
 
 So they darted out into the sunshine, these three com- 
 panions of the maulstick, Pietro and Sandro led by the 
 Boy Leonardo, the Boy of the Renaissance who of a truth 
 would outstrip his generation in an age of giants, this Boy 
 who with the daring of the eagle would seek the mountain 
 tops, nor rest until he had reached the craggy summits. 
 
BALBOA— THE BOY DISCOVERER OF THE 
 PACIFIC 
 
 HE was a merry looking gamin as he stood upon the 
 peak of the hill just above the town, his blue eyes 
 alight, his red hair wind-tossed, his well-knit figure tall, 
 commanding, solitary. Save for his great dog, Leoncisco, 
 crouching at his feet, the place was deserted, as barren 
 as the treeless heights to north and south of him. Below 
 him drowsed the town, Xeres de los Calleberos with its 
 gleaming walls, dreaming of departed glory as it guarded 
 from its hilltops the green valley of the Ardilla. Yet 
 even this sleepy old hill-town had been roused by the 
 momentous news a courier on his way north had brought, 
 news that had sent this seventeen-year-old lad, Vasco 
 Nunez de Balboa, to his eagle's perch above the town. 
 The courier had arrived that morning from Palos, bring- 
 ing word of one Christopher Columbus who, with the 
 sanction of the good King and Queen, had set sail on his 
 stout ship Santa Maria, leading his little fleet of caravels 
 forth to find a new route to India. Standing there in the 
 August heat of that epoch-making year of 1492, Vasco 
 Nunez was all on fire, his hot Spanish blood thrilled by 
 this adventure of the daring mariner. It stirred his long- 
 ing for the sea, that mysterious unknown lying beyond the 
 gaunt Sierra Morena cutting the skyline to the south that 
 lured him ever to cross its snow-clad summits. Beyond 
 that grim barrier lay his world of adventure, nor would 
 he rest until he set forth upon his pilgrimage. He loved 
 the quiet valley and the desolate plain stretching north- 
 
 23 
 
The Boy Discoverer of the Pacific 23 
 
 ward as he loved the hill-town straggling along two hill- 
 tops; but the urge of the quest was upon him, driving 
 him forth never to return. 
 
 The Boy's whole life up to now had been lived within 
 the confines of Xeres de los Calleberos, its atmosphere 
 of romance-soaked walls permeated with the picturesque- 
 ness of the Moor as well as with the austere majesty of 
 the Knights Templars, leaving its impress upon him. 
 Life in this dingy-white hill-town had, in a sense, been 
 a restricted one for Vasco, who, from childhood, had 
 known the pinch of poverty. Yet, he had been rich, the 
 wide avenues of his colorful imagination flinging the 
 world at his feet. The very atmosphere he breathed had 
 fed and nourished his imagination, tales of the Moors, 
 their occupation and their overthrow by Christian knights 
 filling Vasco's mind with brave deeds and valorous caught 
 in the Orient hues of Spanish Middle Age, giving to 
 Spain a romantic atmosphere peculiarly its own, a rich- 
 ness, a luxuriance, a bombastic extravagance in strange 
 contrast to the sombre barrenness of Estramadura, the 
 rock-ribbed country in which the lad dwelt. Below him, 
 wound the Ardilla among green banks dotted with orange 
 and fig groves ; but behind him stretched a gray, treeless 
 plain broken here and there with broad meadows where 
 herds of black pigs and sheep grazed among the outcrop 
 of stone. In these two aspects of country were gathered 
 up the epitome of Spanish life and character, their sombre 
 melancholy and austerity and their sparkling gaiety and 
 love of color ; their proud reserve and their overflowing 
 extravagance and love of luxury. 
 
 It was this dual nature in the Boy that gave him his 
 impetus for doing, for carrying on in the face of over- 
 whelming odds ; that visioned yet held the balance, a hard, 
 practical shrewdness resolving his dreams into realities. 
 
24 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 In a sense, the Boy's background was his strength, the 
 warp and woof of his greatness ; for this lad of Xeres de 
 los Calleberos was the product not only of the great age 
 that gave him birth, but of the centuries gone before, the 
 foundation stones of his heritage set deep in the past, 
 Phoenician, Greek, Carthaginian, Roman, Goth, contribu- 
 ting, become of his very bone and sinew, the hardness of 
 the old Roman in him especially, offset by an Eastern love 
 of color, of the beautiful, of pageantry. This softer side 
 of the Boy, gave him his power of visualization, the past 
 to him as vitally alive, as real as the vibrant present in 
 which he so fully lived. The sentiency of spring even as 
 the palpitating August day, gripped the lad, stirring the 
 depths of him, while he, with luminous vision, seeing into 
 the soul of things, interpreted, thus reckoning with the 
 underlying forces so potent in determining the trend of 
 events. So in the years to come, would he be able to 
 gauge the currents and counter currents with which in 
 the tangled, unblazed trails of the yet undiscovered New 
 World he would have to deal. 
 
 Vasco's schooling had been of the scantiest, that which 
 Xeres afforded being dependent upon the brothers con- 
 nected with the lichen-crusted church whose tower tipped 
 the Moorish wall near one of the six Moorish gates stud- 
 ding the outer defenses of the town. The Boy's ra- 
 pacious hunger for knowledge would have been left un- 
 satisfied had it not been for Brother Juan, who, coming 
 from Seville, brought with him the learning of the schools 
 made famous by their founder, Alfonso the Learned. 
 Brother Juan had been quick to recognize the keen clear- 
 cut mind of the lad, finding in him a responsive sympathy 
 in his love of history, a kinship bringing these two, whose 
 lives were to be spun in such different surroundings, very 
 close. On this Boy of Xeres, Brother Juan had spent him- 
 
The Boy Discoverer of the Pacific 25 
 
 self, giving him of his best, instructing him in Latin and 
 Arabic as well as in the history of his beloved country, 
 that history which was so potent a factor in the making 
 of Spain ; for Spain was the offspring of many races and 
 nations, the Roman, perhaps, the most significant factor 
 in its development, this Roman influence the basis of 
 their laws and civilization, the virile power of Roman 
 culture laying a sure foundation for the nation, Spain, 
 for a time to lead the world in civilization, in culture, in 
 art, making of it a world power. The Boy loved espec- 
 ially to hear the story of the Carthaginian conqueror, 
 Hamilcar, who ruled Spain for a time, his power waning 
 with the downfall of his brother Hannibal, his power 
 wrested from him by the Roman Scipio Africanus, who 
 had saved Rome and her civilization from Hannibal and 
 his cohorts. Then Seville had been named Hispalis, a 
 name to be superseded by that of Julia Romula, after the 
 great Caesar who was to fence this city on the Guadal- 
 quiver about with walls. Thus would the simple Brother 
 Juan trace for the lad the varying powers that had domi- 
 nated Spain, not least among them the Moors. For six 
 centuries the Moors held sway, leaving their mark as 
 evidenced in the dingy town sprawling along its hilltops 
 at Vasco's feet, its crenelated walls and towers bearing 
 the imprint of the East, — the delicate luxuriance and 
 love of color, the dreamy softness so exotic, so strangely 
 at odds with the bleak, gray plain stretching northward 
 toward the Sierra de Gredos, snow-clad and grim. 
 
 Brother Juan had dwelt much upon the crusader spirit 
 with which Christian Spain had fought the Mohamme- 
 danism in its midst, especially emphasizing the valiant 
 deeds of El Cid, who had set the ideal of knighthood very 
 high. A long and bloody war it had been, the Moors 
 vanquished at last by these crusader knights; yet, the 
 
26 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 Moor had left his indelible impress upon the life and 
 character of the land and the people, even as the reced- 
 ing tide. These wars with the Moors, so wild and 
 predatory in their nature, had developed in the Spanish 
 knights a disposition of chivalrous marauding, they de- 
 lighting more and more in roving incursions and extrava- 
 gant exploits. Into it, too, had crept a touch of old 
 Roman days, that curious delight in the cavalgada of 
 spoils and captives driven home in triumph, — an out- 
 crop really of barbarism that broke through the culture 
 and civilization of imperial Rome, finding reflection in 
 this Spanish offspring. Religion held empire over the 
 Spanish mind with peculiar force, lending its aid in 
 encouraging and sanctifying these roving and ravaging 
 propensities. 
 
 Thus the Boy, product of this Age, was swayed by a 
 deep religious fanaticism, demanding outlet in adven- 
 turous knight-errantry, this spirit of chivalry to loom 
 large in his future expeditions into the unknown, as 
 it was to be the motive power of the Spanish discoverers, 
 a distinctive characteristic of those bold spirits from the 
 Spanish Main. As he had listened that afternoon to the 
 courier from Palos, Vasco had been caught by the roman- 
 tic aspect of Columbus' enterprise, the longing to set 
 forth upon the great seas of adventure surging within 
 him. Looking down at his worn jerkin and frayed short 
 clothes, the irony of his aspirations smote upon Vasco 
 Nunez. How could he ever hope to win royal favor and 
 so £t out an expedition to follow in the footsteps of 
 Columbus ? His parents, though much respected in Xeres, 
 found life a struggle against want. They had no power 
 of helping their merry, madcap son to realize his roman- 
 tic dreams. Love was the only thing they had to lavish, 
 and that they gave to him in full measure, Vasco's 
 
The Boy Discoverer of the Pacific 27 
 
 father sensing the latent powers in the lad, recognizing 
 also the urge of the quest that, in his youth, had been his 
 likewise. Yet, standing on the hilltop, his blue eyes 
 resting dreamily upon the distant barrier of mountains, 
 the seeming impossibility of the thing was spurring the 
 lad to action. The Knights Templars who had reigned 
 for so long in this very town basking at his feet, had 
 won their spurs in surmounting the hill Difficulty, their 
 ideal of service, of knighthood, lifting the spirit of the 
 Boy to the heights. He realized of a sudden, that he had 
 played at romantic adventure with his boy comrades 
 long enough. It was time that he turn his face toward 
 the solving of the actual. The spirit of Don Quixote 
 was upon him, and in that spirit he would set out to 
 cross the Sierra Morena. Yet, more truly was it the 
 spirit of El Cid dominating him, to make of him a con- 
 queror, a discoverer whose intrepid spirit was to inspire 
 men through all time to achieve. Perhaps he could em- 
 bark under some worthy captain ! The thought thrilled 
 him. First, however, he would make his way to Moguer 
 and Palos. Later he would push on to Seville, whose 
 greatest prosperity was to come with the discovery of 
 America; for with the discovery of the New World, 
 Seville was to be the centre for this new field of com- 
 merce, as her ports would be frequented by those bold 
 navigators who were to lift their country to the heights 
 of world power. 
 
 Vasco had that morning edged his way through the 
 crowd surrounding the courier at the venta, drinking in 
 with suppressed eagerness the courier's tale of Columbus' 
 sailing, the Santa Maria, commanded by the Admiral, 
 leading the caravels composing his fleet as they glided 
 down the Tinto between vine-clad hills to the sea, the 
 banks lined with weeping women and children whose 
 
?8 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 husbands and fathers had been commandeered for this 
 dangerous undertaking by the King. The courier told 
 of the long months of preparation, of the sullen response 
 of the fisher folk to the royal order of putting their ships 
 and their persons at the command of the Italian admiral. 
 Columbus' indomitable spirit had finally conquered, and 
 he had set forth across the waste of waters to find a 
 new road to India. India! A name holding the magic 
 of the East ! It gripped the lad standing wide-eyed close 
 to the courier, the spirit of El Cid, of San Fernando 
 welling up in him. To struggle and overcome the wilder- 
 ness as these great Spanish knights had conquered the 
 Moors flooded his mind, a vision he was never to lose. 
 Thus was the current of adventure turned by a chance 
 courier on his way to Badajoz with the momentous news 
 of Columbus' sailing on that August day of 1492. 
 
 Standing there in his eyrie, looking out over the melan- 
 choly plain, Vasco Nunez realized that his life at Xeres 
 was over. Palos, Seville, the world of adventure called 
 him and he knew he must go. With the sailing of 
 Columbus the Boy recognized that a new epoch, a new 
 outlet for adventure had opened wide. To Palos first, 
 he would go to hear again of that great setting forth from 
 the fisher folk plying their trade upon the deep. There, 
 perhaps, he too would learn from them the ways of 
 ships and the trade of the mariner. On foot he would 
 go if need be, entering if possible the service of some 
 lord who, if he proved himself, would speed him to 
 Seville, the city of his dreams. A slow road and diffi- 
 cult, it would be; but the heart of this red-haired boy 
 was bold, his restless, roving spirit contemptuous of 
 danger, unconquerable in the face of seeming unsur- 
 mountable obstacles. He would set out at once for Palos 
 where he would await news of Columbus' return, hoping 
 
The Boy Discoverer of the Pacific 29 
 
 he might thus learn from the Admiral himself the story 
 of his voyage. He knew not then that Columbus would 
 land on his return at Barcelona, many leagues to the 
 northeast of Palos ; but he was to hear enough of that 
 daring expedition and its fruits to catch the vision of that 
 great discoverer, a vision he was to hold, the mission of 
 finding the southern sea of Columbus' dreams to be car- 
 ried on to accomplishment by this lad standing upon 
 the hilltop. 
 
 At Palos the lad's prepossessing countenance was to 
 catch the eye of Don Pedro Puerto Carrero, the mighty 
 lord of Moguer, and in whose service Vasco was to re- 
 main some eight years, years of preparation for the great 
 work destiny held in store for him. The military dis- 
 cipline of those years was to temper his fiery spirit to 
 the fineness of a Toledo blade, giving him command over 
 himself that would stand him in good stead in the tangled 
 forest ways of the New World, inuring him to fatigue 
 and suffering likewise. His tireless strength, his power 
 to throw the lance and send the arrow to its mark would 
 make him respected by his followers and the terror of 
 the caciques from whom he was to learn of the great sea 
 lying beyond the mountains to the south of Darien; 
 for the lad was to embark at last under Bastidas, an 
 adventurer of Seville; and so, after his eight years of 
 service with Don Pedro he would set sail for the New 
 World, filled with the spirit of the crusader going forth 
 into splendid and unknown regions to conquer the wilder- 
 ness, and to win or exterminate the infidels inhabiting 
 them. 
 
 The motto of Vasco's house, "He who seeks, finds," 
 was to be his watchword on his adventurous journey, 
 the keynote of his whole life. A seeker he would go 
 forth, a chivalrous marauder in search of adventure in 
 
30 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 the New World, his vision to be set by the tales of that 
 luxuriant country beyond the seas Columbus would bring 
 back, a land of impenetrable forests of tropic growth, 
 of cloudless skies, of blue seas, of strange painted sav- 
 ages and of undreamed wealth, the gleam of gold and 
 precious stones to lure Spain to her doom. Yet, this 
 Boy, Vasco Nunez, would rise beyond the level of a 
 mere free lance ; for he had within him tremendous pow- 
 ers both as a leader of men and as an administrator, 
 powers he would prove in the years to come. As gov- 
 ernor of Antigua del Darien he was to turn chaos into 
 orderliness and prosperity, and this accomplished, this 
 doughty captain of fortune was to lead his men across 
 the Isthmus, journeying from the northern coast by slow 
 and dangerous ways toward the mountain top, his goal, — 
 the viewing of the great sea lying beyond the moun- 
 tains. Then, in very truth, would Vasco Nunez de Balboa 
 grasp the torch of vision of Columbus, that vision of 
 the Southern Ocean which Columbus was to reach, as 
 he thought, by a strait connecting this vast sea with the 
 Caribbean, and by which means he would eventually 
 reach the Oriental spice islands and India, the Mecca 
 of Columbus' dreams. Columbus dying at the very 
 gateway of his discoveries, was to hand on to this in- 
 trepid youth standing upon the hilltop above Xeres, the 
 flaming torch which the Boy would hold high until he 
 had resolved his vision into reality. To unfold nature's 
 mighty secret, and to win dominion of this vast sea for 
 Spain, was to spur the lad toward his perilous under- 
 taking, the very extravagance of the exploit firing his 
 imagination, rousing his romance-loving spirit to action. 
 Through the tropic September heat he and his bold fol- 
 lowers would push their way through matted forests 
 and by rocky precipices, across deep, turgid streams and 
 
The Boy Discoverer of the Pacific 31 
 
 rough ways, this rock-bound wilderness to be made more 
 difficult to cross by hostile tribes holding the mountain 
 fastnesses and who were impervious to kindness. It 
 was then Vasco's mettle as a soldier would be tested, and 
 he would perforce push his way through by use of arms, 
 his good dog, Leoncisco, descendant of the broad-chested, 
 tawny fellow at his side, becoming the terror of the red- 
 skins. 
 
 There upon the bare summit of that New World moun- 
 tain its head reaching the stars, Vasco was to stand, a 
 vast chaos of rock and forest, of green savannas and 
 silver-threading streams at his feet, while in the dis- 
 tance shimmered in the morning sunlight the wild tumult 
 of waters he had spent himself in finding. Having 
 found, Vasco would never rest with viewing it from a 
 mountain top. The lure of the unknown would drive 
 him on to explore still further, to search for the land of 
 the golden temple of which the caciques had told him, 
 those caciques Careta and Ponca especially whom he had 
 won by his noble grandeur and frank affability, and who 
 had provided guides for the trails over the mountains, 
 thus sharing really in the glory of his discovery. Then, 
 having in the presence of his followers, taken possession 
 of that sea, its islands and its unknown surrounding lands, 
 in the name of the Trinity and the Sovereigns of Castile, 
 this Boy discoverer would lead his little band back to 
 Darien, leaving behind him upon the summit a wooden 
 cross, a silent witness of his discovery, of his having been 
 true to the vision vouchsafed him, his return to Darien 
 the signal for renewed effort, for further exploration. 
 
 As Vasco stood there upon the hilltop of Estramadura, 
 his eyes set upon the future lying beyond the Sierra 
 Morena, the prediction of the old Venetian astrologer, 
 Micer Codro, came to him. He had been but a tiny lad at 
 
32 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 the time, when the astrologer had singled him out among 
 the boys of Xeres, his merry smile and mischief-glinting 
 blue eyes sobered for a moment by the gray-bearded face 
 peering at him. Codro's dark eyes had noted the lad 
 standing near him in the patio of his father's white 
 plastered house close to the market place, Codro having 
 paused there to rest for a few days on his way to Barce- 
 lona. It had meant little to the lad then, those fateful 
 words. Yet, in the moment of his greatest triumph they 
 would sweep in upon him as they did now, that moment 
 when he was setting sail with his four brigantines upon 
 the Southern Sea of his discovery in search of new 
 adventures, new lands, vaster riches, only to be turned 
 back to his death, which he was to come by through the 
 treachery of his father-in-law to be, Pedrarias. 
 
 "If ever thou doth see, Vasco mio, Mars in the eastern 
 sky in August, it will be for thee a fateful year. Either 
 thou wilt live to be crowned with riches and be counted 
 the most renowned captain in some far-off, unknown 
 land, or thou wilt fall by an assassin's hand." • 
 
 The Boy's blue eyes flashed at the remembrance, his 
 proud nature contemptuous of lurking danger. How 
 could he fail, he who could outmatch any boy in Xeres? 
 Even with the sword and rapier he was no mean ad- 
 versary. He drew himself up proudly as if in self- 
 dedication to the life of a knight-errant, a life of adven- 
 turous romance, a life of service, of hardship, demanding 
 all of his indomitable courage and fortitude. He, too, 
 would set sail for that unknown world whither even now 
 Columbus, all unknowing, steered his frail craft, con- 
 quering the wilderness in the name of his Sovereigns of 
 Castile, and returning laden with riches, fruit also of 
 his quest. In the gold of the August day, all things 
 seemed possible to this Boy, his imagination spanning the 
 
The Boy Discoverer of the Pacific 33 
 
 distances as his spirit leaped from mountain top to moun- 
 tain top seeking the Southern Sea of his heart's desire. 
 Standing upon his mountain summit overlooking the 
 arid plain of Estramadura and the fertile valley of the 
 Ardilla rimmed by the snow-clad peaks of the Sierra 
 Morena, this Boy Discoverer to be bound himself to a 
 life of quest, a life, that having chosen, he would follow 
 to the end. To-morrow he would set out for Palos and 
 seek service with the mighty Don Pedro of Moguer; 
 nor would he rest until he too sailed westward into the 
 unknown. , With a last look at those beloved hills and 
 valleys, the lad, calling to his dog, turned slowly toward 
 the town, his stalwart figure erect, his eyes shining, his 
 soul burning with the vision he had seen upon the moun- 
 tain top, prophetic of that rock-ribbed mountain of the 
 New World, where, in the flame-like glory of a Septem- 
 ber day some twenty-one years later, he should stand 
 transfixed by the surging beauty of a boundless Southern 
 Sea, the great Pacific that would be forever linked with 
 this Boy Discoverer, Vasco Nunez de Balboa. 
 
DRAKE— THE SAILOR BOY OF DEVON 
 
 AN August haze brooded upon the waters of 
 Plymouth Sound, and the light breeze sweeping in 
 across the weed-strewn rocks left bare by the receding 
 tide, brought with it the tang of the sea mingled with the 
 pungent odor of gorse and heather. Upon the shore 
 of Chatham Reach, the rotting hulk of an old warship 
 lay half buried in the sand. On the poop deck, close 
 to the battered mast, stood a fair, curly-headed boy, 
 his face turned seaward, his dreamy eyes alight, his 
 sturdy figure tense as if already he saw the time was 
 ripe for action, — the realization of his dreams. His 
 lips were parted as if he were still listening to the old 
 sailor, one Tom Moone, lounging at his feet, who, in this 
 year of grace 1552, had been regaling the Boy all that 
 summer's afternoon with tales of the Spanish Main, of 
 Guinea and the Indies where gold and precious stones 
 were strewn as carelessly as the pebbles upon yonder 
 beach; of Spanish galleons that plied their trade 'twixt 
 East and West, trading in oriental stuffs from India, 
 and in that hideous human traffic that prevailed along 
 the shores of distant Africa. As he had waxed to his 
 work, the old salt had pictured for the Boy a marble 
 city lying hid beyond the forest in far-off Peru, "an 
 ancient treasure house of Aztec kings," a palace of for- 
 gotten Incas in whose deep cellars lay great bars of 
 gold and piles of precious stones, more than a king's 
 ransom, a gift worthy of England's Queen, should some 
 stout captain, seeking adventure on the high seas, brave 
 
 34 
 
The Sailor Boy of Devon 35 
 
 the ships of Spain and snatch the prize even as the eagle 
 swoops to soar, bearing its prey swiftly beyond the reach 
 of an avenging hand. So throughout the long summer 
 days, the Boy's imagination was enkindled, was fanned 
 to flame, until upon his soul was etched the vision of the 
 days to come when like Hawkins, and Cook, he too would 
 sail the seas for England until the ships of Spain's 
 Armada should lie sunk or be crumpled into drifting 
 derelicts, leaving England mistress of the seas. 
 
 With a swift movement the Boy turned toward the 
 grizzled sailor, his gray eyes like blue sparks. 
 
 "We'll sail the seas together, Tom, when I have 
 learned from thee the sailor's craft." 
 
 "Aye, that we will, Master Francis, and I doubt not 
 we'll sweep clean the seas for England," Tom answered 
 with a laugh. "Thou hast the making of a sailor, lad. 
 Some day thou wilt be master of a ship, and then — " 
 
 "Then, Tom?" The Boy's voice shook with eagerness. 
 
 "Then old Tom will ship as first mate to one Captain 
 Drake." 
 
 Nor did the old man draw too far upon his imagina- 
 tion; for he had known the Boy from earliest child- 
 hood, and he knew the fine temper of his mind, the 
 daring courage lurking within, that when the time was 
 ripe would spend itself in high adventure, and always 
 on the side of right. 
 
 From babyhood the Boy had lived within sight and 
 hearing of the sea; ever since the night his father, Ed- 
 mund Drake, had fled from Tavistock, the Boy's lullaby 
 had been the rush of the tide and the hum of the sea 
 wind; the clatter of wheelwrights' hammers in the great 
 Plymouth dockyards, and the sea songs of the mariners. 
 Yet there lingered with the Boy, like a thin mist, the 
 memory of a purpling moorland where country tales 
 
36 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 of highwaymen "kindled his reckless heart." So there 
 hung likewise in the background of his mind, that wild 
 ride across the moors, when pillioned behind his father, 
 his tiny sunburnt hands resting upon the big holstered 
 pistols slung lightly in the saddle, the Boy had dreamed 
 himself as riding out upon a freebooting quest of which 
 he was the hero. Born at Crowndale, within the shadow 
 of the abbey walls, the Boy and his father, a stanch 
 "supporter of his ancient faith," had been forced to 
 flee because of the father's outspokenness. So one 
 moonlight night, father and son had slipped away, rid- 
 ing hard across the moorland, nor pausing until they 
 had reached the tiny inn of Protestant Plymouth where 
 safety lay, and where first the stinging brine brought 
 to the Boy a roar 
 
 "Of mystic welcome from the Channel seas." 
 
 Bred upon the unrest of the times the Boy had been, 
 this unrest developing in him all unconsciously that 
 spirit of adventure that later would send him forth upon 
 the high seas to battle there for England, and to win 
 glory for her, the prestige of the seas when he and his 
 small fleet had sailed into the "unknown golden west," 
 and so had made the circuit of the world. 
 
 In this memory of Tavistock, the Boy recalled how 
 he and his companions had played at war, mock com- 
 bats in which those impersonating the Spanish am- 
 bassador and his suite were set upon by those who held 
 for England. Once, when the battle fought was between 
 Wyatt the patriot and the King of Spain, the boy play- 
 ing the part of Philip escaped hanging as by a miracle, 
 so bitter was the feeling against Spain. Later, on one 
 of his expeditions with his father, the Boy was to see 
 Wyatt ride into Rochester, an exploit that was to force 
 
The Sailor Boy of Devon 37 
 
 the Duke of Norfolk to recoil before the patriot's ban- 
 ner; and following that, he was to see the fleet in the 
 Medway supply this self-same patriot rebel Wyatt with 
 artillery. Thus from babyhood the Boy was fed upon 
 adventure, his heart and his imagination tuned alike 
 to deeds of daring, deeds of valor done for England 
 and her glory. 
 
 Kindled upon adventure, — wild tales of pirates, high- 
 waymen and the like — , the Boy's imagination was 
 further played upon by books that he had read, and by 
 the magic chart drawn for him by his father, a chart 
 worked out upon a buffalo's horn, marking now here, 
 now there, an island where "vaste treasure lay con- 
 cealed" — gold, rubies — ; or perchance, an island of 
 dwarfed promontories with "fairy harbors under elfin 
 hills." Within this inner world the Boy wove the colored 
 fancies of his throbbing brain into patterns gay, fan- 
 tastic, patterns grotesque, perhaps, and seemingly im- 
 possible, and yet this tiny web holding within its filmy 
 folds the embryo vision that in future years was to 
 reach into that golden west of unknown seas, that vision 
 without which, so says the poet, "a people perishes." 
 Thus, in those early days, the Boy dwelt in Tirn 'an 
 Og, drinking deep /from out the Fountain of Immortal 
 Youth ; while many an afternoon upon some hill fringed 
 by the sea, he lay amid'st the purple heather reading 
 of Arthur and of Avilion; of knightly deeds done by 
 the Table Round; of Arthur's magic birth, — the babe 
 born on that ninth wave into the tide-swept cave 'neath 
 Tintagel's craggy height, and caught by Merlin who pro- 
 claimed him king; of Launcelot and Galahad and all 
 the legend of the Holy Grail, — that life of quest upon 
 which England was to build her greatness. From this 
 same book the Boy formed his high ideal of knightly 
 
38 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 chivalry and reverence for women, that gentleness and 
 loyalty that would bind him ever to the highest and 
 the best, unswerving loyalty and devotion to his Queen, 
 and to that other Bess, the fair-haired maid of Sydenham, 
 whose love was to hold him constant through all his 
 long adventurous years. Though his character was pos- 
 sessed of all the rugged bareness of his Cornish coast, 
 and of a simplicity that is the very hallmark of true 
 greatness, yet within the Boy there lay an unsuspected 
 wealth of tenderness and gentle reverence. Reflective 
 for a child he was, and acting always upon principle, 
 and yet no idle dreamer, nor abnormal. He was essen- 
 tially the spirited English lad full of school-boy pranks ; 
 for action daring and adventurous, was to play with 
 him ever the major part, his active mind evolving 'al- 
 ways some new enterprise, some madcap adventure. 
 Always there lurked behind those gray-blue eyes a merry 
 humor, a humor that going hand in hand with that 
 dauntless courage would surmount all difficulties, dang- 
 ers and discouragements. 
 
 His mind, even as a boy, was forever bent upon some 
 "mighty goal," the culmination of these years of un- 
 conscious development to be reached later in his voyage 
 round the world, — that voyage being in truth the epitome 
 of his whole character, as it was to show the inherent 
 courage, prudence and self-reliance to carry through so 
 stupendous an undertaking in the face of difficulties 
 that to-day seem scarcely surmountable when one re- 
 members the tiny craft with which he sailed into un- 
 charted seas, rounding the Cape of Horn and passing 
 through the terrors of the Straits of Magellan, where 
 in the raging whirlpool of waters black and storm-swept, 
 his ships were separated and he and his "Golden Hynde" 
 were well-nigh lost. 
 
The Sailor Boy of Devon 39 
 
 "A mile of howling sea had swept between 
 Each of those wind-whipped straws, and they were gone 
 Through roaring deserts of embattled death, 
 Where, like a hundred thousand chariots charged 
 With lightnings and with thunders, one great wave 
 Leading the unleashed ocean down the storm 
 Hurled them away to Southward." 
 
 This vision for England that had been born and bred 
 in the Boy was to be enlarged and deepened. A few 
 weeks hence he was to begin his sea career by ship- 
 ping in a Channel coaster as ship's boy. This vessel 
 traded between England and Flanders, and in those 
 troublous days when Spain strove to brand her au- 
 thority upon the Flemings by deeds of violence and in- 
 quisition, the ship often returned to Plymouth with 
 Flemish refugees, whose tales of oppression and of gross 
 cruelty but added to the flame of hatred burning so 
 fiercely in Queen Bess's realm against the arrogant 
 Spaniard, that arch-type of autocracy and oppression 
 that stifled the free-loving English race, and driving 
 them at last to stake their all in throwing off the galling 
 yoke of Spain. So to the Boy, looking off across the 
 Sound of Plymouth, where lay England's ships of war 
 and all the smaller craft with which the merchants plied 
 their trade, there came a new and widening vision of 
 the future, in which he too was to play his part in 
 glorious service for his Queen and England. He stood 
 on the threshold of his career, his noviciate of doing, 
 faithful performance of the duties of a ship's boy, and 
 on a ship that some day he was to command and own; 
 for the ship's master upon his deathbed some years later, 
 was to leave his vessel to the Boy because of his faith- 
 ful service, and, also perchance, because he saw the 
 smouldering genius in the Boy that marked him for a 
 great career. 
 
40 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 As the Boy stood there upon the poop deck of the old 
 rotting hulk, his dreamy eyes turned seaward, he saw 
 the rise and fall of the ships riding upon the incoming 
 tide. In that deep silence, he heard its far-off murmur, 
 this flooding tide putting on for him new meaning, — 
 a symbol, perhaps, of the days to come. As the tide 
 crept nearer there spread across the strip of beach and 
 over the silvery waters of the Sound the flush of sunset, 
 the afterglow that was to crown his world with glory 
 when he too had reached the floodtide. For even as 
 a lad the soul of Francis Drake was England, and al- 
 ready he was dreaming of the hour when he should 
 sail the seas for her, and when his ships should lie in 
 Plymouth Sound, and all night "singing sailors by the 
 silver quays should polish their guns waiting for the 
 dawn." 
 
 So in that grim nursery the Boy grew up, his ear 
 tuned to the clang and clatter of the shipwright's ham- 
 mer, while upon his vision rose, 
 
 "In solid oak reality, new ships, 
 As Ilion rose to music, ships of war 
 The visible shapes and symbols of his dream." 
 
 The voice of the sea was to this sailor boy of Devon 
 the call of England, and already the Boy's heart leaped 
 in answer to that call. Aquiver, the lad turned to the 
 old sailor at his feet. 
 
 "For England we will sail the seas, Tom, for England 
 and the good Queen Bess." 
 
 The rugged sea-dog rose slipping the cap from off his 
 grizzled head. 
 
 "Aye, for England and the good Queen Bess, God bless 
 her. She'll be needin' us and all stout English hearts, 
 my lad. See, the tide be settin' in. We must hapten ere 
 the beach be covered." 
 
The Sailor Boy of Devon 41 
 
 They scrambled down from the battered hulk, old 
 Tom Moone and the Boy, and wended their way across 
 the pebbly beach Plymouthward. The silence of the 
 sunset hour brooded everywhere save for the faint 
 swish of the oncoming tide, upon whose flood in years 
 to come, because of this brave sailor boy of Devon, 
 England would sail victorious, mistress of the seas. 
 
RALEIGH— THE BOY DISCOVERER 
 
 THE stillness of the dawn lay upon the bleak stretches 
 of the Dartmoor hills, — hills upon which the heather 
 bloom still lingered, and touched now with hoar-frost 
 that, catching the first gleam of the sun, turned shim- 
 mering to gold. On the edge of the thicket of cloud- 
 capped Cator's Beam, a boy rode slowly, pausing now 
 and again to watch the swift changing beauty of the 
 dawn. A hound followed at his heel, sniffing the frosty 
 air, and eying his master with silent eagerness, ready 
 for the word that would send him off upon the trail. 
 Presently from across the hill, a horn was wound, its 
 silvery notes echoing through the wooded gorge, caus- 
 ing the boy and the dog to pause abruptly. At the 
 same moment, there was a rustle in the thicket near them. 
 With a sharp bay, the hound dashed forward into the 
 pungent bracken, and a second later, a great stag leapt 
 lightly into the open moorland, the dog in hot pursuit. 
 Pausing now only to wind his horn, the boy put spurs 
 to his horse, disappearing in the mists of the cloud-hung 
 summit. The mist thickened, and at every step the 
 chase grew more difficult. Often the stag disappeared 
 entirely, and the boy was forced to rein in his horse to 
 listen for the baying of the hound, and so to follow 
 as best he might. Once more he thought the quarry 
 had slipped from him; but he pushed on, flushed and 
 more eager because of the difficulties besetting him. 
 Something within him urged him on to reach and grasp 
 that which lay beyond the gray blanket of fog, until 
 
 42 
 
The Boy Discoverer 43 
 
 at length he paused triumphant, the stag stretched at 
 his feet. For a second time a horn was wound, this 
 time much nearer, and before the echoes of the boy's 
 answering blast had died away, a stalwart horseman 
 one Walter Raleigh, gentleman, rode into the copse, 
 a proud smile lighting his handsome face as his hawk- 
 like glance swept from the boy to the stag lying on 
 the heather. He dismounted and came toward the boy. 
 
 "Thou hast done well, Walter. I am proud of thee," 
 he said looking down into the boy's eager face. 
 
 "He is a prize, isn't he, Father? See his branching 
 horns!" 
 
 In his rich Devonshire voice the boy rolled out the 
 words, the color heightened on his rugged, handsome 
 face, his gray eyes gleaming, alert. He pulled off the 
 plumed cap that he wore, revealing a mass of dark 
 hair that waved back from his high intellectual fore- 
 head. He was tall and bony for his years, he was 
 but twelve, strong and developed by the hardy train- 
 ing in the open that had been his since babyhood. As 
 soon as he could sit astride a horse he had gone up 
 with his father, or, perchance, his two half-brothers 
 Humphrey and Adrian Gilbert, to hunt the deer amid 
 the wooded gorges of Holne, over the dreary downs 
 of Hartland Warren, or, as now, among the thickets 
 of Cator's Beam, the spot he loved the best; for from 
 here he could, when the mist lifted, catch a glimpse of 
 the far blue southern sea that lured him ever, kindling 
 his imagination until his deep gray eyes grew luminous 
 with vision. Love of the sea was born and bred in his 
 bones, coming to him by inheritance from his mother 
 Katherine Champernowne, a woman of rare beauty 
 both of face and character, who handed down to this 
 son by her second marriage, all the sterling qualities, 
 
44 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 the daring and the wit, the love of the sea and of ad- 
 venture of her Norman Viking ancestors. / 
 
 Four years before, in September, 15^6, the Boy's 
 father had leased the fishing tithes of the manor of 
 Sidmouth, and many a long summer's day the Boy had 
 spent fishing along the gray trout streams, dreaming 
 of the day when sword in hand he would go forth to do 
 great deeds for England. Or from the tarry quay of 
 Budleigh-Salterton — thai tiny port perched 
 
 . . . "Like a sea-bird's nest 
 Among the Devon cliffs" . . . 
 
 he had flung a line for bass or whiting-pollock catching 
 not fish merely, but "rainbow colored things," his soul 
 enmeshed in a web of dreams that later would be spun 
 and woven into a wondrous design, a tapestry that 
 would show how he had used his great gifts of mind 
 and soul for England's glory. So he would sit and 
 dream of Drake and Tonson longing for the day when 
 he like them should sail the high seas and take captive 
 some richly laden galleon from Cathay. Or he would 
 lie stretched for hours looking up into the face of some 
 old seaman listening to his tales of daring deeds done 
 in the name of England against the Spaniard. He had 
 been but a baby when Tonson had returned with the 
 first wonderful legend of the hidden treasure-house of 
 the Spaniard in the West Indies; thus early was his 
 imagination inflamed by the perilous romance of such 
 adventures. His ambitions thus aroused, were to be 
 fed first at Oriel when England thrilled at the news of 
 Hawkins' tragical third voyage ; and next, some five years 
 later, after his return from France, where he had served 
 with a troop of one hundred gentlemen volunteers under 
 his kinsman Sir Henry Champernowne, an expedition 
 
The Boy Discoverer 45 
 
 fitted out by the Queen, Elizabeth, to aid the French 
 Huguenots, he was to share in Drake's revenge for Juan 
 de Ulloa. A passion for England was the hall-mark of 
 the day, a passion that even as a boy flamed up in him, 
 to consume him all his days. As England was to be 
 the great love of his life, so hatred of Spain was to run 
 like a red strand through his whole career, to be at 
 once the measure of his greatness, the secret of his fall. 
 
 The burning of the Exeter martyrs had made a deep 
 impression on the Boy, giving birth to this hatred of the 
 Spaniard, and had developed in him a broad tolerance 
 and love of liberty, the spirit that demands not only the 
 right to live, but desires as passionately to let live, — 
 a budding really of that deep sense of justice and liberty 
 that is the very fibre and backbone of the England 
 of to-day. This broad tolerance he inherited also from 
 his mother, who though a Catholic by birth and upbring- 
 ing, was yet so impressed by the spirituality of one 
 Agnes Prest during her trial and imprisonment, that 
 she finally joined the Church of England of which her 
 husband was already a member. 
 
 Life at Hayes-Barton where the Boy first saw the light 
 of day, was of the simplest, an even round of homely 
 duties marking the days at the old manor house that 
 stood in a secluded valley amid tall hedges and wooded 
 hills, embowered in May in apple orchards white with 
 bloom; while beyond the hedges stretched rich water 
 meadows, their green sward flecked with red fallows 
 and red kine. With all the depths of his passionate 
 nature the Boy loved this picturesque gabled house with 
 its heavily mullioned windows, thatched roof and deep 
 eaves; and about it his imagination wove a romance 
 that the more presumptuous gloomy towers of Compton 
 Castle whither he often went to visit his half-brothers 
 
^6 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 Adrian and Humphrey, never inspired in him. It was 
 this deep-rooted simplicity that lay and underlay the 
 foundation stones of his rugged character, a simplicity 
 that even amid the luxury of court life and bejeweled 
 clothes was to crop out especially in those later years 
 when England sleeping was to forget her "Ocean- 
 Shepherd from the Main-deep sea." This quiet back-- 
 water was to be the deep setting of the Boy's life 
 even though he was destined to reach out as the moun- 
 tain torrent to the sea. It was at Hayes-Barton that 
 he learned from his father the fine arts of a gentleman, 
 receiving from him his early education, an education 
 including not merely Greek and Latin and manly feats 
 of arms, but also those high ideals of true knightly 
 chivalry and courtesy and noble living that formed the 
 bedrock of his character. His mother, too, instilled in 
 him a gentle reverence, a robust democracy, that in 
 later years was to make him a great leader among men. 
 At Compton, where the Boy spent much of his time 
 with his half-brothers, he was to receive much of the 
 outer grace of his training in the fine arts of a gentle- 
 man. Within the shadow of the quaint old towers of 
 Compton Castle standing among the apple orchards of 
 Torbay, Humphrey and Adrian Gilbert lived in courtly 
 elegance, noble men, many-sided and high-minded, 
 soldiers, Christians and discoverers, products of that 
 Elizabethan Age. Imbued with this atmosphere of great- 
 ness and nobility, the Boy's soul grew and expanded 
 as a flower touched by the sun, unconscious yet of the 
 day when he would give expression of this age in which 
 he lived by his great powers and diversified character. 
 It was from these noble brothers of his, that the Boy 
 was to learn the art of fencing and all that pertained 
 to the soldier's calling; but it was they who also fired 
 
The Boy Discoverer 47 
 
 the Boy's fancy, whetting his appetite to learn quickly, 
 these seeds of scholarship that were to blossom later 
 at Oriel where new zest for achieving scholarship had 
 been awakened by the visit of the good Queen Bess to 
 Oxford, when she -had evinced her. own great learning, 
 replying to the mayor's address of welcome in the same 
 stately Latin language. 
 
 Though he was destined for a soldier's career, and 
 was to distinguish himself as a brave commander, a 
 daring leader of men, yet it was the sea that would ever 
 claim his allegiance; perhaps because instinctively he 
 saw that on the sea lay the destiny of England. Most 
 vividly of all the Boy remembered at Compton the great 
 charts over which he and these sailor brothers of his 
 would pour, charts in the making, indicating wide 
 stretches of mystic seas, and lands unknown and un- 
 explored. In the long winter evenings when the sea-wind 
 howled about the towers of Compton, they traced with 
 eagerness the voyages of Tonson, of Hawkins, of Drake, 
 across the seas to far-off Cathay or Eldorado, that magic 
 land of the Spaniard where untold treasure lay strewn 
 like pebbles on their own Devonshire coast. It was these 
 charts that caught and held the imagination of the Boy, 
 troubling depths in his nature already stirred into con- 
 sciousness by the old sailors who frequented the tarry 
 quay at Budleigh-Salterton. A great yearning for the 
 sea overcame him, and already he had wrung a promise 
 from his brother Humphrey that when they, — Humphrey 
 and Adrian, — should set sail upon a like expedition, that 
 he too should be of the ship's company, — an expedition 
 that should not be wholly for the raiding of ships upon 
 the high seas, nor to fill the ships' holds with treasure 
 from the treasure-house of Spain in the West Indies: 
 but an expedition that should set out for the discovery 
 
48 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 of new lands, above which the fair flag of England 
 should float, lands that by right of first discovery should 
 be claimed and held for England and her Virgin Queen. 
 Light words, these, spoken half in jest, yet holding 
 within them potentialities undreamed, a tiny seed that 
 in its blossoming was to shed its petals so far and wide 
 that somewhere always the sun would be shining on 
 these bright jewels of England's crown. 
 
 Standing beside his father upon the shrouded hilltop 
 of Cator's Beam, these things swept over the Boy like 
 a tidal wave, and for the moment submerged him. At 
 his feet lay the fleet-limbed stag, symbol of the quest 
 that all his life would lure him toward the cloud-capped 
 heights; about him hung the gray blanket of fog that 
 presently would melt away before the rising sun even 
 as the mist-bound future would be penetrated, the gray 
 cloud dispelled by his burning vision, leaving visible the 
 fair country of his dreams. The sun rose higher, 
 and the mist lifting, the Boy saw again the far blue 
 southern sea which he loved gleaming in the pale Novem- 
 ber sunlight, that sea of magic and of mystery upon 
 which in the days to come he was to sail and fight the 
 Spaniard ; and like Columbus, to discover, perhaps, some 
 fairyland of gems and gold. Discover ! the Boy's imagina- 
 tion hovered about the word as if of a sudden it pos- 
 sessed some magic meaning. Had he, indeed, fpund the 
 key that would unlock the gate barring reality from 
 his world of dreams? In that moment the Boy realized 
 that his vision was reality, a vision piercing with its 
 gold into the spaces that hitherto had been veiled in mist. 
 He saw England no longer bounded by the white cliffs of 
 her island coast, but reaching out across the seas where, 
 discovering new lands, she would plant colonies. This, 
 
The Boy Discoverer 49 
 
 then, was England's destiny, to sweep the seas, to stamp 
 her greatness upon new found lands, a greatness woven 
 out of the very warp and woof of her ideals of justice, 
 of civilization, of faith, of honor, ideals that developed 
 in these new found peoples, not mechanical obedience, 
 but initiative, teaching them the arts of self-government, 
 self-discipline, .developing all silently a wealth of loyalty 
 that some day was to give in its blossoming an hundred- 
 fold. In fancy the Boy saw the ships of Drake and 
 Hawkins riding at anchor in Plymouth Harbor like 
 restive greyhounds straining at a leash, and recognized 
 the backbone of England's strength, the sign and symbol 
 of the England that was to be, an England whose ships 
 would sweep the seas of pirates, guarding the track- 
 less wastes that merchantmen might ply their trade in 
 peace and safety. Nor would England ever betray 
 this trust imposed upon her; her sea power a thing to 
 be used not for her glory but to her glory; rather she 
 would be ever the champion and guardian of the freedom, 
 the justice, the civilization she was to plant in every 
 corner of the earth. 
 
 To his father the Boy said nothing of his vision. He 
 merely pointed toward the sweep of open sea where 
 white sails bellowed to the wind. 
 
 "When Humphrey and Adrian set sail I shall go with 
 them in search of the new land lying over seas, Father." 
 
 The old man looked proudly at the stalwart lad be- 
 fore him, yet a note of admonition crept into his voice 
 as he answered the Boy. 
 
 "Thou shalt serve England as she may have need 
 of thee, Boy. That is the duty of every man, and the 
 spirit of true service." 
 
 "To serve England as she may have need of me, that 
 
50 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 I promise thee," the Boy answered in a ringing voice. 
 
 "Of that, lad, I have no fear. Come! Thy mother 
 will be awaiting us." 
 
 Together the man and the boy slung the great stag 
 across the Boy's saddle-bow. Then mounting their 
 horses, and with a last look at the sea, they made their 
 way down to the quiet valley of Hayes-Barton, the 
 face of the Boy illumined with the vision still flooding 
 the deep recesses of his soul, that vision of England 
 which had come to him standing upon the summit of 
 cloud-capped Cator's Beam. 
 
LA SALLE-^THE BOY COLONIZER 
 
 THE fitful glory of a late April day suffused pasture 
 land and river, the east wind bringing with it the 
 pungent odor of rain-soaked earth mingled with the 
 tang of the sea, and of orchards heavy with bloom. 
 The tide still hung at the flood in this year of grace 
 1674, as a young man tall and comely pushed off from 
 the right bank, turning his craft down stream. With 
 long, even strokes he propelled the boat, not hurrying, 
 yet with purposefulness, his deep blue eyes set upon the 
 horizon, his bronzed face, stern for his years, set about 
 with the fair hair that was his Norman heritage. Virility 
 marked every movement of his stalwart figure silhouetted 
 against the dark line of poplars fringing the bank, a 
 suppressed eagerness lighting his eyes as he sniffed in 
 the delicious fragrance of spring. His head was bare, 
 and his tunic, slightly open at the throat, revealed his 
 broad chest ; while beneath his leathern sleeves, the play 
 of his muscles was visible. Goodly to look upon was 
 Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle this gay April 
 morning as he wound his way down stream leaving the 
 sun-flecked towers of Rouen behind him, his face set 
 toward Jumieges and the sea. His heart sang beneath his 
 jerkin; for had he not but lately been received by the 
 King? The great Louis had not only received him, 
 granting him a prolonged interview, but so carried away 
 had he been by the young man's eloquence and the 
 prospect of aggrandizement, that he had given Rene- 
 Robert his royal promise of aid, thus making possible 
 
 51 
 
52 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 the fulfillment of the Boy's dream,— to lead France 
 and civilization into the fair valley of the Mississippi. 
 
 Perhaps Louis, satiated by the indulgence and luxury 
 of court life, was, for the moment, caught by the magic 
 of the intrepid youth's personality. This youth, though 
 but one and thirty, had braved the trackless wastes and 
 the snow-bound winters of Canada; and now, after 
 many years returning to France, he had brought with 
 him the freshness and the vigor of the snow-clad pines. 
 Louis, too, in his youth had had his dreams for France 
 and her aggrandizement; but they had been transmuted 
 into mere exaltation of himself. Thus had his self- 
 indulgence tarnished the pristine beauty of his vision, 
 the public moneys squandered to gratify his whims, to 
 exalt his person. Yet steeped in that renaissant world of 
 great achievements, the sated king, connoisseur that he 
 was, recognized the bold spirit, the singleness of pur- 
 pose, the loyalty to France, the breadth of vision of 
 this youth; and stung, perhaps, to momentary response 
 to that fidelity to a high purpose, he had pledged him- 
 self to fit out an expedition for the colonization of 
 Louisiana, that vaste stretch of country reaching from the 
 Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes to be forever linked 
 with his royal name. 
 
 From his audience with the King, Rene-Robert had 
 returned to his birthplace, Rouen, to prepare for this 
 expedition that was to realize all his dreams, to be the 
 zenith of his career, the years of toil and hardship in the 
 wilderness to be crowned at last by success, a success 
 fought for and won for the glory of France and the 
 advancement of civilization. Used to the solitudes of 
 the unblazed trail, this Boy of great visions grew restive 
 in cities, weary of over intercourse with men. His soul, 
 accustomed to the silence of forest ways and the limit- 
 
The Boy Colonizer 53 
 
 less spaces of an untrammeled sky, craved that deep 
 intercourse with nature to which his pioneer life had 
 familiarized him. Out in the open he could think, could 
 lose himself in his dreams, his soul as a gull breasting 
 the wind and the salt spray. So to-day, on his return 
 from Versailles whither he had been summoned by the 
 King some two weeks before, Rene-Robert sought the 
 solitude of the Seine that he might work out his plans 
 for the impending voyage so thoroughly that the splendid 
 vision illuminating his soul might be the more fully 
 realized. 
 
 This power of organization was inborn in him, an 
 heritage from his merchant father, a rich burgher of the 
 town, the Boy's love of organization, of centralization, 
 attracting him early to the Jesuits. He had become a 
 novice of the Order only to find his proud, strong per- 
 sonality unyielding to the shaping hand of a religious 
 order. Born a leader, he could not accept passive obedi- 
 ence for himself, could not obey any initiative but his 
 own. This idea of centralization was in the air, part 
 of that strange Age of super-types and super-human 
 achievements which because of its materialistic paganism 
 overreached itself, leaving traces of stupendous beauty 
 and of overwhelming ugliness and ruin in its wake. Yet, 
 born leader that he was, Rene-Robert knew the force this 
 centralization of power gave to any organization or 
 enterprise; and recognizing its value in his work as ex- 
 plorer, its need in the attainment of success in his 
 chosen work, he had bent all his talents to pattern his 
 expeditions on one absolute authority. So would he 
 pattern this present expedition which was to be the 
 climax of his career, the measure of his giant powers. 
 
 An intense longing for action had ever possessed the 
 lad, a desire for achievement which was but the intense 
 
54 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 hunger of an insatiable intellect so indicative of the 
 age in which he lived; for it was an age keenly alive 
 and athirst for knowledge, an age unsatisfied with super- 
 ficiality, craving to know the cause and effect, the why 
 and the wherefore of things, an age speculative, ques- 
 tioning, driving men into the untrodden wilderness of 
 doubt and gropings, of unbroken forests and uncharted 
 seas, seekers, finding no rest, discoverers with ever the 
 mirage of their goal luring them on. Thus into the 
 wilderness this Boy, Rene-Robert, all unconsciously, 
 had carried with him the spirit of the Renaissance, his 
 dream of finding China by way of the Mississippi, widen- 
 ing into the loftier project of leading France and civiliza- 
 tion into the valley of that great river. As he had pene- 
 trated deeper into the wilderness, the Boy had gathered 
 knowledge, his analytic mind sifting these tales of In- 
 dians and of traders, convincing him at length, that the 
 Mississippi emptied, not into the Pacific nor the Gulf 
 of California, but into the Gulf of Mexico, a conviction 
 he was to prove before his mind rested satisfied. 
 
 Undaunted by the sufferings and hardships inevitable 
 in these expeditions from the frozen fields of the north 
 where icy-blasts scourged the Great Lakes, to the dan- 
 gers attendant upon the successful navigation of that 
 dangerous river, its waters treacherous and uncharted, 
 its banks infested by hostile savages, the Boy Colonizer 
 had already journeyed the length of that little known 
 river not once, but several times before he had brought 
 his petition to the King. The well-nigh tropical beauty 
 of the country at the river's mouth, had struck deep 
 into the Boy's beauty-loving soul, its soft contours, its 
 luxuriance in flowers, in verdure touched with a riot of 
 color, after the bleak wastes of the north, suggesting a 
 gentler side of life where one could relax, where life 
 
The Boy Colonizer 55 
 
 was not forever keyed to a fierce struggle for bare ex- 
 istence. Yet struggle, the clash of forces elemental in 
 their titanic strength, thrilled the Boy, was of the very 
 air he breathed ; for the urge to action, to adventure were 
 of the essence of his being, driving him out to the New 
 World and its forests primeval, — the blood of the bold 
 Norseman and of the Norman builder in his veins; of 
 the pioneer steeped in the virginal beauty of heroic, un- 
 bound nature, and of the ardent, aesthetic worshipper of 
 the beautiful in the arts and in perfection of craftsman- 
 ship, this last being as deep a craving in his nature as 
 the deep delvings into science. 
 
 This Boy's virtues were Roman in their austerity, the 
 stoic in him inuring him to hardship, spurring him to 
 carry on, as the burning faith of the Middle Ages swept 
 men's spirits to the heights. Not that Rene-Robert was 
 a doubter; for to the end he was a loyal and devout 
 Catholic. It was rather the temper of his faith, the out- 
 ward expression of it that was different, a cool, analytic 
 spirit of appraisement unknown in the earlier age hav- 
 ing crept in. The age in which he lived was not that of 
 the knight-errant and the saint. It was of the modern 
 world of practical study and action; not of meditation 
 but of speculation, of reaching out into the unknown 
 after hitherto forbidden fruits. Thus there dwelt with 
 this Boy drifting down the Seine upon the floodtide, 
 a twofold nature, that of the sturdy pioneer caught in 
 the mystic glow of a splendid vision, and the product 
 of the Renaissance, the keen analyst, the cool appraiser 
 and worshipper of beauty, the hero, if you will, not of a 
 principle nor of a faith, but of a fixed idea, a determined 
 purpose. The humanitarian note it was he was sound- 
 ing rather than the spiritual, his immutable purpose, his 
 inspiration, his faith to which he offered the passionate 
 
56 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 devotion of the mediaeval saint worshipping at a shrine. 
 Yet while the temper of his faith was changed, its em- 
 phasis ; yet with this youth familiar with the wilderness 
 rather than with courts, with the primitive than with 
 the hyper-culture of the France of Renaissance, there re- 
 mained the virility, the saneness, the directness and 
 simplicity of one who has dwelt much beneath the stars, 
 who has seen the night pale and the dawn break, who 
 has drunk deep of the winds of the morning with his 
 face set toward the east aglow with the promise of 
 coming day. 
 
 As the boat glided gently down stream, the lad's mind 
 swept back to his boyhood in the gray mediaeval town, 
 a happy, carefree life, his father, Jean, a rich burgher 
 of Rouen, who, like his fellow-burghers, lived more 
 like a nobleman than a merchant, descendant really, of 
 those guilds of mediaeval days when democracy was 
 in flower. Some of Rene-Robert's family had held 
 high diplomatic posts at court, and honorable employ- 
 ment both at court and in this lichened capital of Nor- 
 mandy, the Boy's father having honorable standing with 
 his townsfellows, a citizen who took his part in civic 
 affairs, and whose clear-cut mind made him a power 
 as an administrator. 
 
 The Boy had loved his home, though the call of the 
 quest had sent him forth early to seek his fortunes in 
 New France, the glamour of romance luring him across 
 the Atlantic to this new found land. Rene-Robert's 
 school life, too, had been that of a nobleman's son, his 
 splendid mind seeming to warrant all the advantages 
 the schools had to offer. His inclination for the exact 
 sciences had been given play, and he had early grown 
 proficient in mathematics. Thus was the Boy equipped 
 for the work that was his to do; and hand in hand 
 
The Boy Colonizer 57 
 
 with his intellectual development went the moulding of 
 his character, the fine promise of the lad's moral nature 
 revealed early in his uprightness and directness, his 
 love of truth and his ardent courage, his inflexibility of 
 purpose and his loftiness of soul, — the soul of a great 
 leader who would bear the brunt of every danger, share 
 his last crust with his men, and, in moments when his 
 men were ill or discouraged, reveal beneath his austere 
 aloofness a deep tenderness and understanding unsus- 
 pected save by the few who knew and loved him. 
 
 Caught up by the magic of the past, the Boy's mind 
 slipped back to his school days. He had been a great 
 reader, and the glamour of the lives of such men as 
 Columbus, Balboa, De Soto had held him spell-bound, 
 had crystallized the urge within him for action into a 
 definite current. He, too, would be a discoverer and plant 
 the flag of France in those distant lands lying in the 
 valley of the Mississippi and beyond where no white 
 man had yet set foot, and so win glory for France who 
 would ever command his fealty. He had loved to wander 
 among the hoary byways of the past, so characteristic 
 of the town, had steeped himself in her history and in 
 the richness of her architecture, the Place where Jeanne 
 d'Arc was burned and the giant cathedral holding his 
 boyish imagination in thrall. It was the vastness of the 
 design that held the lad in this work of a master builder, 
 a design into which beauty and perfection of workman- 
 ship were interwoven, the instinct of the Norman builder 
 awakened in the lad, enabling him to vision and to build 
 also on a titanic scale. In Jeanne d'Arc Rene-Robert 
 found and reverenced the pure spirit of undying loyalty 
 to France and to her voices ; for he too had had visions 
 that only he saw ; had heard voices that only he had heard. 
 
 Then there were the quays, a source of ever growing 
 
58 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 interest to the Boy. Here in this mediaeval mart of 
 commerce ships gathered in the roadway of the Seine, 
 bringing with them the smell of the East, strange per- 
 fumes and the rich stuffs of the Orient, suggestive of 
 ease luxuriant, that exotic atmosphere so redolent of 
 the self-indulgent luxury that for a time was to sap the 
 vitality of his loved France. Or those other ships 
 that came from the Dutch Indies or from that northern 
 land where flew the royal standard of France, bringing 
 tales of an Eldorado where gold lay waiting for the 
 daring pioneer, and where fighting and adventure lay 
 open for those weary of the artificiality of the perfumed 
 court. It was when a new vessel anchored in the stream, 
 the lad haunted the quays fresh with the tang of the 
 sea, mingling with the seafaring men who poured into 
 his eager, boyish mind tales of pirates and of far lands 
 which had lured the Spaniard in his greed for gold. For 
 hours on end the lad would linger on the fish-stained 
 quays listening to these bronzed ear-ringed sailors, who, 
 catching the light in the Boy's blue eyes as he lay sprawled 
 on the quay at their feet, spun their web of tales with 
 colors as vivid as the Orient-hued stuffs lying in the 
 vessels' holds. They told him of the West Indies where 
 Columbus first sighted land, and where they had found 
 strange savages, flowers, brilliant colored birds and trees 
 unlike those of France, a land where vegetable life flour- 
 ished without the toil demanded of the Norman farmer. 
 They dwelt, also, upon the dangers attendant upon the 
 voyage, the crew often disheartened to the point of open 
 mutiny only to be shamed by their gallant commander, 
 whose inflexibility of purpose and faith in his vision 
 held him constant until the New World was found, and 
 his faith justified. This constancy thrilled the lad, breath- 
 ing as it did, of those self-relying energies of modern 
 
The Boy Colonizer 59 
 
 practical enterprise which were the essence of his being; 
 for this Boy Colonizer was of the age that gave him 
 birth, an age of wide-winged visions yet with feet firm 
 planted on the earth, — a spirit of self-reliance permeating 
 the atmosphere. 
 
 To this rich merchant's son, however, these tales smack- 
 ing of high adventure, meant more than a new world 
 for the free lance and the romantic mind of the wild 
 adventurer. To him was to come a broader, a more 
 comprehensive vision, one that would be for the perma- 
 nent growth and advancement into new fields, tending 
 toward world power for his beloved France. It was 
 as if he saw into the far future when commerce would 
 be the dominating factor in world power. Thus in his 
 growing vision, Rene-Robert saw in those fertile south- 
 lands a soil that would not only produce everything raised 
 in France, but a soil productive of fine pasturage where 
 flocks and herds might pasture in the open throughout the 
 year; where there was an abundance, also, of wild cattle 
 whose fine wool could be turned into cloth, and where 
 hemp and cotton was indigenous to the land and could be 
 manufactured. His dream, then, was no mere romantic 
 vision of planting the flag of France on a virgin soil and 
 proclaiming it as belonging to the king of France. It 
 was the vision of the Norman builder who saw in the 
 building of colonies the beginning of a new France, this 
 daughter to enrich and make more powerful the mother 
 country across the sea. Nor did he in his dream of com- 
 mercial and industrial growth forget the necessity of 
 winning the Indian tribes to this new allegiance that by 
 kindness and example would also win them to the Church 
 and Christ. 
 
 Though he knew it not, the Boy's vision was to be 
 the forerunner of one James J. Hill, a financier, who 
 
60 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 coming two centuries later, was to see likewise the Miss- 
 issippi as a roadway to the sea and for inland trade bind- 
 ing north and south. So Rene-Robert for that purpose 
 was to build two sailing vessels to traverse the length of 
 that great river, thus connecting the bleak north with 
 the Gulf, opening these pioneer marts of commerce to 
 the trackless ocean. Furs and buffalo hides he could 
 ship on these vessels going south, that returning north- 
 ward would bring to the inhabitants of barren Canada 
 the abundant yield of the south. This giant task would 
 mean, the young man foresaw this gay April morning, 
 the building of forts to guard these new-found colonies 
 from the savage Indian tribes hostile to the French, and 
 also from the British and Spanish settlers who were 
 lured by the richness of the Mississippi Valley. Fort 
 Frontenac, Fort St. Louis, where the great city of that 
 name now rises, and a fort to guard the river's mouth, 
 would be the first he would build, a labor in itself suffi- 
 cient to daunt the stoutest heart. Yet, his Orient-hued 
 dream daunted not this intrepid youth; for this lad, shy 
 and reserved, found no joy save in the pursuit of stupend- 
 ous designs, and having visioned, he could not rest until 
 accomplishment. 
 
 Turning a bend in the river where the twin towers of 
 Jumieges rose in majestic splendor above the poplars 
 fringing the bank, the Boy recalled his first going out 
 to Canada, following his elder brother, a priest of St. 
 Sulpice, the Abbe Jean Cavelier, after he had left the 
 Jesuits; and tracing thus the growth of his vision, his 
 early dream of finding China by way of the Mississippi 
 melting in the sunlight of a deeper knowledge of the 
 country into a vaster conception that encompassed the 
 onward sweep of civilization, and the progressive com- 
 mercial and industrial growth of New France, a vision 
 
The Boy Colonizer 61 
 
 whose realization would be an epoch in the progress of 
 the world. 
 
 Inured to hardship though he was, this intrepid Boy- 
 Colonizer was in this new expedition to meet his supreme 
 test ; nor was he to fail. As he nosed the boat in shore 
 toward the Abbey gates of Jumieges, whither he was go- 
 ing before he should start out on his pilgrim's journey, 
 that his undertaking might be blessed, his blue eyes 
 glowed with a suppressed fire, his inflexibility of pur- 
 pose fine tempered and resilient, galvanized into action. 
 In a short time now, he would be setting sail, down this 
 same roadway to the open sea, his pilgrim's way to lead 
 him through thousands of miles of forest, of marsh, 
 of river ways, only to be baffled; yet going on, the 
 Boy's indomitable spirit to rise unconquered over every 
 difficulty, nature, the desertion of his men, personal ene- 
 mies, until the realization of his vision, — the leading of 
 France and civilization into the valley of the Mississippi. 
 Rene-Robert's ambition was vast and comprehensive; 
 yet he was to act in the interest both of France and 
 civilization. 
 
 Standing there in the stern, his stalwart figure flung 
 against the tall stately poplars and the Abbey towers, 
 his eyes set toward the open sea, the Boy saw the years 
 of toil opening out before him. His life, though he knew 
 it not, was to be cut off by a traitor's knife, his span of 
 life so short, yet rising to its zenith in the realization 
 of the splendid vision of conquering the wilderness, of 
 laying the foundations of civilization, that wilderness 
 that in the centuries to come was to blossom as the 
 rose. So he would set forth in the early summer of 
 the year 1674, this Boy Colonizer of Louisiana, who was 
 to bring the spirit of the Renaissance into the New 
 World. 
 
JOHN WOOLMAN— THE QUAKER BOY 
 
 THE soft, fresh beauty of April lay athwart the blue 
 Jersey hills, transforming them, the green mist of 
 new-born leaves ashimmer in the spring sunshine, the 
 tree-clad slopes vibrant with the song of birds. Under a 
 wide-spreading pine, a boy lay stretched upon his back, 
 his deep blue eyes gazing up through the twisted branches 
 into the silvery April sky, his dreamy eyes aglow, sun- 
 shot with vision. He lay very still, his sturdy, big-boned 
 figure clad in homespun, his homely freckled face tense, 
 expectant, as if seeking to pierce some riddle in the sky. 
 Beside him lay a small copy of the Bible, the book by 
 which he had first learned to read, and which first had 
 enkindled the imagination in the child, opening up for 
 him the broad avenues of life, avenues through which 
 he could wander at will, by which new vistas were for- 
 ever unfolding, luring his questing spirit onward. On 
 this April morning of 1730, John recalled how he had 
 first awakened, when as . a little lad of seven, he had 
 stolen away from his schoolmates, loitering outside the 
 school to play, and had sat down by the roadside to read 
 the twenty-second chapter of Revelations, — "He showed 
 me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, pro- 
 ceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb." 
 From that moment, though all unconsciously, he had 
 become a seeker, the spirit of the quest driving him on 
 not only to seek the pure river of the water of life, but 
 to interpret life in sky and tree, in the wayside flowers 
 and in the birds of these spring-shot wooded hills. 
 
 62 
 
The Quaker Boy 63 
 
 The memory of this first vision remained clear-cut, 
 impressed indelibly upon his mind, and as the Boy lay 
 there listening to the wind-bells of the forest aisles, 
 he was wondering with child-like directness, if the river 
 which he sought was to be found in the vasty spaces of 
 the blue above him. Vaguely he knew that the quest 
 must lead ever upward to the heights, even while the 
 river which he was to seek so diligently all his life, was 
 to dwell within him, this power of the inward life, the 
 means by which his goal would finally be attained; 
 for because of his vision, crystal-clear, his reach would 
 ever exceed his grasp. Nor was it strange that the mind 
 of this boy of ten should have dwelt on such things ; for 
 he came of simple people whose simple religion was of 
 the atmosphere they breathed, the daily expression of 
 their hard working lives, their minds set upon the things 
 of the spirit, their souls of high aspiration even though 
 their lives were hedged in by the crude, threadbare reali- 
 ties of existence, of toil and the drudgery of making 
 ends meet. So to the Boy always, his measure of good- 
 ness, his standard of simple uprightness was to be that 
 which he had known in his own home, the leaven of that 
 home atmosphere permeating him, radiating its influence 
 even as his plain face exuded goodness, that illumina- 
 tion emanating alone from one of lofty soul. 
 
 Tenderness and humility were characteristic of the 
 lad even at ten, a tenderness coupled with a stern moral 
 rectitude, ascetic in its unswerving strength as regards 
 himself, yet unbending, full of tenderness and under- 
 standing toward humanity and human frailty. As he 
 lay there beneath the swaying pine branches, it flashed 
 in upon him as he noted the robins and the song spar- 
 rows flitting joyously from tree to tree, the memory of 
 a day when he had gone on an errand for his mother 
 
64 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 to a neighbor's house. In a great oak shading the front 
 yard, the lad's keen eyes had discovered a robin's nest, 
 and as he had approached, the bird had flown off hoping 
 to distract the Boy's attention from her young. John's 
 blue eyes had caught fire, and with Boyish zest he had 
 stood off pelting her with stones until she had fallen dead 
 at his feet. For a moment the Boy had stood exultant as 
 a conqueror gloating over his prey, proud of his prowess ; 
 but his triumph had been short-lived. Horror and re- 
 morse had swiftly gripped him as he realized the enormity 
 of his cruel deed, one doubly so in that he had not only 
 wantonly killed an innocent creature, one made to add 
 its note of joyousness in a world as sunlit and as shot 
 with shadow as the woods wherein he lay, but a creature 
 whose young were dependent on her. What should he 
 do? Leave the young fledglings so cruelly bereft to 
 starve, or kill them also and so save them from further 
 suffering? The struggle within the lad was sharp and 
 short, the lad's strong sense of right, his fineness of per- 
 ception in sensing values, forcing him to do the thing that 
 was hardest yet kindest — to kill the young birds with his 
 own hand. So with quivering heart, John had climbed 
 the tree, and with eyes averted had swiftly and expedi- 
 tiously crushed out those feathered lives whom he had so 
 wantonly and irretrievably wronged. It taught the Boy a 
 lesson he was never to forget, and out of this tiny seed 
 there germinated and grew his inherent belief in freedom, 
 freedom of soul and body, a belief which later was to 
 find expression in his Journal and his papers denouncing 
 slavery, upholding and denning the tenets of democracy. 
 Thus, these seeds, planted by the obscure Quaker boy of 
 Northampton, were to blossom later, first in the American 
 Revolution, and second when Lincoln championed both 
 these causes that America might fulfill and realize her 
 
The Quaker Boy 65 
 
 high destiny. When as a young man, he was to go about 
 visiting meetings in the back settlements of Pennsylvania 
 and Virginia, two things were to give this boy, John 
 Woolman, grave concern. As the guest of Friends during 
 these travels who owned slaves, he shrank from receiving 
 services from their slaves, shrank from lodging with them 
 even. He did not feel it consistent for Friends who stood 
 for freedom of the spirit to keep men's bodies in bondage. 
 The trade of importing slaves from their native country, 
 was even more repugnant to him, and against it he was to 
 fight vigorously with his pen as well as by declining finally 
 to draw up bills of sale for such traffic. Even when he 
 was hired by the year, he had protested to writing such a 
 bill ; though he felt obliged to obey his master. Thus the 
 lad's belief in democracy was the outcome of his deep- 
 rooted aversion to slavery, all creatures having the right 
 to live free in body and soul, equal in the sight of God 
 whether black or white, whether of marked attainments 
 or mere common garden flowers. 
 
 This love of freedom was inherent in the lad, and 
 through the gateway of his imagination he would make 
 his escape from the narrow confines of his home atmos- 
 phere into the spacelessness of spheres untrammeled by 
 the crude realities, the petty drudgeries of his everyday 
 life. Into this radiant world of his imagination, the lad 
 would creep, there to lose himself in star-lit worlds of 
 elysian fancy through which flowed that river of his 
 dreams, clear as crystal, symbol of all life, life-giving, a 
 source of spiritual strength always to this plain Quaker 
 lad of the Jersey hills. This cultivation of the inward life 
 gave to the Boy one of life's richest treasures, resource 
 within himself, and because from babyhood he had con- 
 templated life from the inside outward, he was to be able 
 in after years to give out again to others the fruits of this 
 
66 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 rich storehouse of strength and clear-cut vision. Thus 
 the lad, striving to live in the spirit of truth, absorbed in 
 the stillness of his soul the beauty, the deep mystery, the 
 meaning of life, drinking deep of the river of life, that 
 full of vision he might give forth again, his work to make 
 for the elevation of the race, to leave a blazed trail of 
 idealism leading to the heights, an idealism demanding 
 fulfillment at all costs, the justification of a noble heritage. 
 His was a broad-minded, catholic mind, reaching around 
 and beyond things, a mind sunshot with vision and mel- 
 lowed by benevolence and a gentle kindliness lying be- 
 neath the shyness and reserve ; for the Boy was possessed 
 of a reserve coming to him as an inheritance not only 
 from his English forebears, but also from his Friend's 
 training. Self-discipline, self-possession, self-control 
 were of the essence of the training in the Woolman home, 
 a repression of one's feelings that made for serenity of 
 spirit, a tranquillity of soul making for power, that gen- 
 tleness of strength well-fount of moral force. So were 
 developed unplumbed depths in the Boy, John's, nature 
 that later were to give of their richness, his quiet but deep 
 enthusiasm for humanity urging him on, as of a call from 
 God to decry slavery, to hold up the ideal of democracy 
 for this land of his birth, soon itself to be born a nation, 
 for the world, an ideal for which two centuries later the 
 civilized world would rise in arms in a death struggle; 
 for civilization, where democracy is not the dominant 
 note, perishes, growth, the evolutionary reaching upward 
 to higher, more godlike ways of living being impossible 
 where autocracy holds sway. 
 
 The Boy's schooling was of the most primitive, as those 
 pioneer days would indicate; yet, though unlettered, John 
 was possessed of a natural refinement, his heritage of 
 noble traditions and that inherent love of beauty and of 
 
The Quaker Boy 67 
 
 all things true, fusing his soul with the crystal pureness 
 and flame-like truth of the seer, the visioner of splendid 
 visions, the dreamer of great dreams. Highly sensi- 
 tized, the Boy possessed a delicate sense of fitness, an al- 
 most Celtic sensing of values, deep-rooted in the soil of 
 his heritage, and therefore of the bedrock of the race; 
 making for the strength and moral toughness of fibre, an 
 inherent rectitude that in seeing true, reveals a delicacy 
 of perception, a vibrant expression, a vision clear-cut in 
 its recognition of vital issues. Thus into his language, 
 stimulated by long familiarity with the lofty language of 
 the Bible, the beauty of expression of Penn's "Fruits of 
 Solitude," there crept a beauty of expression all his own, 
 the purity of the Boy's heart to be revealed in the years 
 to come in his Journal which was in its delicacy to have 
 kinship with Pascal, the Frenchman's spirituality of that 
 same exquisite quality, that same evanescent robustness 
 and simplicity of soul linking all truly great spirits. 
 
 A pioneer, this Quaker Boy was to be, in that his was 
 to be the honor of touching first the American spirit in 
 literature, the spirit of democratic idealism inherent in the 
 soil, yet the outgrowth of long centuries of tradition; 
 simple expression, too, of a man's heart free from all 
 effort for literary effects, or of servile imitation of 
 another's art. Born of the soil, with its rich heritage, 
 the Boy John was to give forth again as a bird sings in 
 its native air, flute notes exquisite, true, unique, atune to 
 his surroundings, his message sinking deep into the na- 
 tion's very soul, when, out of the maelstrom of the Revo- 
 lution, it arose clean-limbed and vigorous, a Sir Galahad 
 dedicated to the quest, to the guarding of the Grail life 
 was to give into its keeping. Tenderness and sweet hu- 
 mility, the sinking of self were the qualities that this 
 intense desire of the Boy to render smaller the sum of 
 
68 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 human sorrow and sin by drawing men nearer to God, 
 was to develop in the Boy; for waywardness, that in- 
 grained craving for freedom, was of the bone and tissue 
 of the lad, a waywardness and perversity that caused his 
 mother many an anxious hour. Yet her great mother- 
 love, so tender and so understanding leading John gently 
 back into the path he should follow, revealing to this son 
 of hers the happiness of humility, the true freedom won 
 only by self-surrender; implanting in him the essence of 
 all true living and of faith summed in those words : "Not 
 my will, but Thine be done." 
 
 The lad worshipped his father and mother, yet he re- 
 membered, lying beneath the pine lifting its branches to 
 the April sky, a day when his own will seemed sweeter to 
 him than anything else, and he had defied his gentle 
 mother, stubbornly holding out against her when she had 
 reproved him for his obstinacy. His father, returning 
 from a journey, reprimanded the lad, albeit not in anger, 
 and John, his conscience suddenly awakened, was silent, 
 fleeing to his room, and there, in its familiar bareness, 
 flinging himself upon his knees. This and a severe sick- 
 ness shortly afterwards, were forever linked in the lad's 
 mind; for in the long, still days and weeks, he, with 
 crystal vision, saw the enormity of his arrogant pride, his 
 mind through "the power of truth" wearying "in a good 
 degree of the desire of outward greatness." Not to 
 shine before men, but to possess illumination of soul, 
 became the incentive of his life, and out of it was to 
 blossom true greatness of soul, that God-given gift of 
 royal souls to breathe forth the richness of a nature who 
 dwells upon the heights, because he has not feared the 
 toil and the sweat, the pain and the monotony of the 
 valley, his vision of the ideal having kept the monotony 
 
The Quaker Boy 69 
 
 of work from becoming the monotony of life; because, 
 in truth, his soul is indwelt by the spirit of God. 
 
 John's home life, though severely simple, was full of 
 beauty, radiating the spiritual joy of a home permeated 
 with love; the serenity and quiet peace of souls living 
 for each other, whose hearts are close to God. Trust and 
 faith were the keynote to the companionship existing 
 between these parents and their children, and John re- 
 called with a thrill how after meeting on Sundays he and 
 his brothers and sisters had gathered about the open 
 fire, when, through the peaceful afternoon his father 
 had read to them from the Bible and other holy books. 
 Among those books, Fox's Journal, Penn's "Fruits of 
 Solitude," and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" stood out, 
 especially the latter, which had gripped the imagination of 
 the child, awakening in him the spirit of the quest, the 
 quest for truth, for "God's habitation," through the ful- 
 filment of the work he felt divinely called to do. 
 
 As the Boy lay beneath the spreading pine, absorbing 
 the vibrant beauty of the April day, his soul steeped in the 
 wonder of a world so radiant and joy-giving, there came 
 to him a sense of the way he was to follow, the vision of 
 the pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, the 
 gold-shot path by which he was to seek and ultimately 
 find the sea. This simple lad sprung from the virgin soil 
 of a new world, was to seek and to interpret life with all 
 the simple directness and ruggedness of the pioneer, to 
 reveal its beauty and its shadow, the beauty of freedom, 
 the dark blot of slavery upon an enlightened people, — 
 seeds dropped on the banks of a winding river to be car- 
 ried forth on those crystal waters and to.be swept out into 
 life's horizonless sea, thus to reach into the four corners 
 of the earth. 
 
WASHINGTON— THE BOY FOUNDER OF 
 AMERICAN LIBERTY 
 
 THE crisp October day was drawing to a close in all 
 its gold-brown glory, the freshening, southwest wind 
 sweeping up the Potomac, rustling the fallen leaves car- 
 peting the hillside. A tinge of frost was in the air, bring- 
 ing a ruddier glow to the fair face of the Boy standing 
 there, his head, bared to the breeze, thrown back as a 
 thoroughbred hunter sniffs the air. The Boy's brown 
 hair, caught in a cue, waved back from a forehead indica- 
 tive of the thinker, as his square-cut, massive jaw bespoke 
 quiet strength, purposefulness, a bull-dog tenacity that 
 would push on until accomplishment. Straight as an 
 Indian he stood there, his legs wide apart, his keen, blue- 
 gray eyes fixed upon the wide stretch of the sun-glinted 
 river far below him winding away to the westward, his 
 mind absorbed in the future opening out before him as 
 sunshot as the autumn woods and the gleaming river. 
 Passion and will alike slumbered in the still face of this 
 Boy, George Washington, the boy of sixteen already 
 shadowing the man to be. High courage and the spirit 
 of command came to the Boy an inheritance from his 
 mother, yet coupled with restraint, a self-discipline hold- 
 ing in leash his fiery temper, giving him a command over 
 himself, thus making him in the years to come, a great 
 leader of men. Yet this silent strength, presenting him 
 as it did to the unobserving, as cold and unfeeling, 
 wrapped his soul in an intense loneliness, his shyness 
 making him withdraw into himself, his dreams and as- 
 
 70 
 
Boy Founder of American Liberty 71 
 
 pirations unsuspected and unrevealed even to his inti- 
 mates, save, perhaps, to his half-brother Lawrence, at 
 whose home he was now staying, and which he loved 
 with all the intensity of his silent nature, — Mount Vernon 
 that, of a truth, was to be the deep setting of his life. 
 The stately colonial house crowning the hill, basking in 
 the autumn sunlight not far from where the Boy stood 
 lost in his dreams, was indicative of the homely heritage, 
 the sturdy strength, the simple grandeur characteristic 
 of the Boy's whole nature. 
 
 Yet as the Boy stood there, his deep-set eyes alight, he 
 seemed no mere idle dreamer. The very hunting suit that 
 he wore — red coat and white buckskin breeches and 
 boots, — stamped him a lad of action ; for he loved to ride 
 to hounds, and his play hours were given over to fox 
 hunting and life in the open. Swiftness of action temp- 
 ered with patience, cool courage with wisdom had been 
 nurtured in him from babyhood, this self-control marking 
 the greatness of the man who was to vision and to build 
 up a nation founded upon liberty, a liberty not to be con- 
 founded with license, but a liberty insuring to each and 
 every one a freedom of action that yet recognized service 
 as its highest goal. 
 
 To-day as he had ridden to hounds with his friend Lord 
 Thomas Fairfax, that gallant old nobleman had, of a 
 sudden, flung open the door of the future to him. A 
 warm friendship had sprung up between George and this 
 sixty-year-old sportsman; for the shrewd man of the 
 world had been quick to note the seeds of unusual promise 
 in the lad. The companionship of this man, conversant 
 with courts and the culture of Oxford, with the refine- 
 ments of the old world, had done much in moulding 
 George's character and manners, giving him also an in- 
 sight and knowledge of a world other than his own, an 
 
72 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 understanding, perhaps, of the trend of events, of the 
 currents and counter currents seething in the political 
 maelstrom of Europe, especially of England. It gave the 
 lad a poise, an insight his colonial life alone could never 
 have given. George was still sensitive of his disappoint- 
 ment in not going to sea, and the offer of Lord Fairfax 
 to send him across the Blue Ridge mountains to survey 
 his vast estates fell as balm on the Boy's wounded spirit, 
 giving him back that sense of manhood so dear to a boy ; 
 for he had chafed under the restraint his mother had put 
 upon his actions even though he had yielded to her plead- 
 ings. What would she think of his journey into that 
 wilderness lying beyond the misty blue of mountains edg- 
 ing the western sky ? Would she again try to thwart his 
 ambitions to blaze a trail into the unknown? His face 
 grew stern, determined. No, this time he must decide for 
 himself. He was now a man in stature if not in years, 
 his whole future dependent upon his present choice. A 
 man's work lay before him, was at his hand to do. The 
 days of self-tuition and preparation were, in a sense 
 over. His chance to make good, to prove himself, was 
 at the dawning. 
 
 The Boy's thoughts slipped back to that first clash with 
 his mother, that clash of wills in which his own had 
 yielded before her tears. After his father's death when 
 George was but eleven years old, the Boy had been much 
 at Mount Vernon, with his brother Lawrence, these visits 
 turning the lad's thoughts into military channels both of 
 sea and land. Brother officers of Lawrence's old regiment 
 visited at Mount Vernon as did many a one from Admiral 
 Vernon's old fleet, — that same gallant admiral under 
 whom Lawrence had cruised, and for whom Lawrence 
 had named his estate. Tales of the East and West 
 Indies circulated about that hospitable board, tales of 
 
Boy Founder of American Liberty 73 
 
 campaigns against pirates, the thrilling capture of Porto 
 Bello, the bombardment of Carthagena firing George's 
 imagination, rekindling within him the military ardor of 
 his ancestors, awakening in him the desire for action, for 
 adventure. At last, gripped by the longing to reach out 
 into the unknown, the lad had revealed his longing for a 
 naval career to his brother, a longing Lawrence had in- 
 stantly sympathized with and encouraged. This brother, 
 whom George in his silent way worshipped, obtained for 
 him a warrant, and a few days later the Boy had appeared 
 before his mother in his midshipman's uniform eager to 
 enter upon his new life. His mother's silence had chilled 
 him. 
 
 "Mother! Don't you like me in uniform?" he had 
 asked in a low voice. 
 
 "It means separation. Is that nothing to you?" 
 
 George's face burned now at the remembrance. 
 
 "You are unfair, mother. I am a man now, with a 
 man's work to do." 
 
 "Your uncle Ball advises against it. His letter came 
 this morning. Think of the hardships of life at sea." 
 
 George had pushed the idea of hardships swiftly aside. 
 
 "A man's life, mother. How can Uncle Ball know in 
 London what is best for me here ?" 
 
 "I am your mother, George. If I refuse to let you go, 
 you will not disobey me?" 
 
 "Do not force me to, mother. My word is pledged to 
 Lawrence and to Admiral Vernon." 
 
 "You will go, then?" 
 
 "I have no choice. I must." 
 
 "And your pledge to your dying father, George? Is 
 that as nothing? I need you for awhile yet, Boy. Go 
 back to school for two more years. It will be time enough 
 then to choose a career. I will not try to hold you then." 
 
74 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 So the Boy had yielded, but the intensity of his struggle 
 only he knew. To renounce that which he had undertaken 
 was as death to him; and more than that his word had 
 been pledged. Yet beyond all the glory of adventure, 
 the Boy also saw his duty writ large. He had pledged his 
 dying father to care for his mother. The test of his 
 father's trust in him, the test of his service had come. 
 His recognition of that service was to be indicative of his 
 whole life, — a giving of himself in service to his country 
 in her supreme hour of need. So two years had slipped 
 by, years marked by great application to his studies es- 
 pecially in mathematics and those branches which were 
 to fit him for either a civil or military career. Land sur- 
 veying was one of the most important of these, and in 
 it the lad had schooled himself with that thoroughness 
 and completeness characteristic of all he did. It was 
 this devotion to duty that had first attracted Lord Fair- 
 fax, and the Boy's diligence and obvious aptitude for the 
 work had won him the offer to survey his friend's estates, 
 an offer opening to him not merely a knowledge of the 
 country lying beyond the mountains, but an intimate 
 knowledge of the peoples and conditions there, an in- 
 herent knowledge he was later to reveal in his under- 
 standing of men whether Indian or white, whether French 
 or British, his integrity, his sense of justice, his simple 
 courage rallying men to him, commanding likewise their 
 undying loyalty. 
 
 This power of leadership was revealed early in the 
 Boy; for he had not been at school many weeks before 
 he had been looked up to as the commander-in-chief of 
 Hobby's school. The martial spirit of his ancestors 
 burned within him, and all his amusements took on a 
 military aspect. Of his schoolmates he had made soldiers, 
 and many a royal battle had been fought between the two 
 
Boy Founder of American Liberty 75 
 
 camps, William Bustle, a school-fellow commanding the 
 "French army," George the "American." Later, his un- 
 swerving sense of truth and justice had made him umpire 
 in his schoolmates' disputes, portraying a spiritual su- 
 periority, character being in the last analysis, the test of 
 true leadership whether as general or statesman. Thus 
 from childhood, the Boy showed a deep moral integrity, 
 a fine sense of honor, the fruits of a noble heritage and of 
 a home whose atmosphere was steeped in love and reli- 
 gious beauty. 
 
 The Boy's face glowed now with a tender light, re- 
 membering the beauty of that home on the Potomac, its 
 vast acreage lying between Pope's and Bridge's Creek — 
 a home where George's much loved father had taught him 
 early the value of generosity and unselfishness, of service 
 and of truth, of honor and of justice; and his mother 
 those principles of democracy which came to her an in- 
 heritance from her ancestor, John Ball, the Kentish 
 preacher, whose eloquence had set in motion the Wat 
 Tyler insurrection of Richard II. time. Within this lad 
 of colonial Virginia, there was mingled loyalty to the 
 lost Cause of the Stuarts, loyalty to the king deep in- 
 grained in his nature, and a passion for freedom and for 
 justice, that passion which is the heritage of every Eng- 
 lishman and for which he will give his life blood. 
 
 A great love of home welled up in the lad standing 
 upon the hill-crest in the golden glory of the October 
 afternoon, and his thoughts dwelt lovingly upon the 
 father he had lost in his eleventh year, setting upon him 
 the seal of manhood with its attendant responsibilities. 
 He called to mind the long winter evenings when the 
 family had gathered about the wide-mouthed fireplace 
 with its blazing logs, his father telling him of the Wash- 
 ingtons of England, how they had come over with the 
 
76 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 Norman Conqueror, these deWessingtons, as they were 
 known then, settling first near Durham where they be- 
 came a power both in State and Church ; for it had pleased 
 William the Conqueror to bestow upon them royal pre- 
 rogatives, this power being put to noble ends. Most of 
 all the Boy loved to hear of Sulgrave Manor in North- 
 hamptonshire, the ancestral home of their branch of the 
 family. There was the lichened, stone mullioned house 
 with its black oak staircase and square-framed windows 
 standing in a park not far from the gray, straggling ham- 
 let, splashed here and there with color from flower beds 
 and vivid walls, which had always for the lad an especial 
 fascination. It stirred his imagination to a sense of its 
 old world beauty, its brooding melancholy, the power of 
 the past, of tradition, bearing its impress upon the Boy, 
 he all unconsciously recognizing his kinship with it, his 
 roots as of the soil from whence it sprang. Thus in the 
 after years, when he had cast off his allegiance to the 
 king in the cause of liberty, he felt himself true to these 
 traditions, these ideals, this soil of his heritage; for he 
 was but fighting for the rights of all justice-loving 
 Englishmen against the crass autocracy of the German 
 king, George III., and in that power he was to conquer. 
 Particularly the Boy loved to hear the story of Sir Henry 
 Washington, that gallant soldier ancestor whose ad- 
 herence to the Stuart cause was summed up in his superb 
 defense of Worcester. From him came to the lad mag- 
 nanimity and constancy of purpose, qualities that were to 
 be the measure of his greatness, as they would also carry 
 him to his goal ; for that bull-dog spirit of holding on until 
 accomplishment, that steadfastness, which having seen the 
 city, follows the vision to realization, were to carry this 
 boy of destiny through many a slough of despond and the 
 blackness of despair. Faith in the dawn that has ever 
 
Boy Founder of American Liberty 77 
 
 come when the night is blackest, held him true to his 
 vision; and by its light did he found a nation whose bed 
 rock was liberty, inherent birthright of the Anglo-Saxon 
 race. 
 
 The Boy's schooling had been of the most elementary, 
 that which colonial Virginia afforded, his first instruction 
 under an Englishman, Hobby by name, whom George's 
 father had indentured and brought out from England 
 with him. Then had followed a few years at a neigh- 
 borhood school under a Mr. Williams, where the lad had 
 made himself proficient in mathematics, his desire being 
 threefold, — to be an engineer, a soldier, and to steer a 
 ship. His father's dream for George had been a school 
 and university career in England such as the two older 
 lads, Augustine and Lawrence had enjoyed. Death had 
 cut short this possibility, the younger lad having to con- 
 tent himself with the more meager education afforded him 
 at home. 
 
 When George had confided to his father his desire 
 to be a soldier, his father had asked him what he would 
 do if he was beaten. The lad had replied boldly: 
 
 "I would demand one good meal from the enemy for 
 the fun he had beating me; then thank him, and try 
 again." 
 
 This was the spirit of the lad who was to hold the des- 
 tiny of America in his hands, who was to carry on 
 through the horrors and privations of Valley Forge, 
 the sting of defeat seemingly urging him on until victory 
 was won for his Cause. 
 
 With a quick movement, the Boy's eyes searched out 
 the landscape, — the shining river, the color-flecked 
 hills — , his keen eyes glowing soft as he drank in the 
 beauty all about him. Life in the open, where his soul 
 swung free in the limitless spaces was his passion, a life 
 
78 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 he had known from babyhood, giving a healthy vigorous 
 outlook, a sanity the more circumscribed life of a city 
 rarely gives. The woods and fields, the river bordered 
 by a green carpeted meadow were his playground where 
 he tramped and fished, or developed his muscles in 
 athletic sports. Even as a tiny lad he had become a 
 keen woodsman, this early training developing in him 
 an eye for detail and close observation that would stand 
 him in good stead as soldier, as diplomat, as statesman. 
 Quick to note signs and symbols of the forest life, the 
 Boy knew the habits of the birds and animals, as he was 
 swift to sense danger, a hidden menace lurking in the 
 underbrush. Somehow his lonely nature found solace in 
 the deep silence of forest ways, his kinship with nature 
 bringing him in close communion with elemental forces 
 to which his strong passionate nature responded. The ele- 
 mental was strong within him, even as he possessed also 
 that heritage of an old world culture and civilization, the 
 one the counterpart of the other, making for a virility 
 and power titanic and dynamic in its forcefulness. From 
 nature, the Boy derived spiritual strength and guidance, 
 his soul alive to things beyond the horizon's rim ; for the 
 lad was essentially the seer, his power of vision reaching 
 into the future, unbounded by the shackles of the present. 
 Yet no mere visionary; for in his building, it was the 
 day's work that wholly occupied him, and in its realiza- 
 tion lay the permanence of the dream he had visioned. 
 
 Tremendously powerful of frame, the lad was noted 
 for his prowess, not only in such feats as throwing a 
 stone across the Rappahanock, but in that fearlessness of 
 spirit denoting the conqueror. With a deepening gleam in 
 his eye, the Boy's mind slipped back to his mastering of a 
 superb Virginia thoroughbred whose lawless spirit had 
 defied every attempt to be tamed. George, on a dare, had 
 
Boy Founder of American Liberty 79 
 
 boldly entered the field where the horse was pastured, 
 had bridled and saddled him ; then having mounted rode 
 the horse until he died, the horse defiant to the last, yet 
 recognizing in this stripling his master, his proud spirit 
 broken by the strength of that iron hand and will. Thus 
 the lad was fitted for the task lying ahead of him, a 
 task demanding tremendous physical endurance as well 
 as mental. 
 
 Standing there upon the hill-crest, the unblazed trail 
 of his future beckoning him, the urge of adventure 
 gripped him as never before. Dimly he saw in it, not 
 merely a surveying expedition and the beginning of his 
 career; but the portent of greater events. From his 
 brother Lawrence, the Boy had learned much concerning 
 conditions on the frontier lying beyond the Blue Ridge 
 and the Alleghenies, conditions pertaining not merely to 
 the Indian tribes, most of whom were friendly to the 
 British, but conditions touching the prestige of the 
 empire, produced by the daily increasing arrogance and 
 aggression of the French. There could be but one end- 
 ing — war, his brother had impressed upon him. 
 
 "Keep your eyes open, and your mouth shut, George. 
 Your observations may be of greater use than we know," 
 Lawrence had said to the Boy that very day, when the 
 Boy, all flushed, had told him of Lord Fairfax's offer. 
 
 A raw school boy he was to enter the wilderness that 
 coming March. He would come out a soldier tried in 
 battle with nature, with the Indians, with the French, 
 his cool courage, his swiftness to see and press an advan- 
 tage, his initiative, to give him place in the councils of 
 his country. Men were to trust him for his directness 
 and his justice, as they were to admire him for his tact 
 and diplomacy in handling delicate situations. Yet, more 
 than that, the urge to construct, to build was the deepest 
 
80 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 instinct in him. He saw beyond the autumn-tinted forests 
 the onward march of civilization as a tide surging up 
 from the sea. Whither was it tending? Under whose 
 banner would the pioneers of the future rest? An issue 
 with the French was certain ; but after it, what ? 
 
 Already, perhaps, with his keen sensibilities, this Boy 
 founder of American liberty perceived that cloud as yet 
 no larger than a man's hand that was for a time to darken 
 the sky with its ominous thunderings and lightnings ; and 
 out of whose dark depths was to be born a nation. To 
 raise a standard to which the wise and honest could repair, 
 the event to be in the Hand of God, was to be the vision 
 of this Boy standing upon the hilltop — a vision he was 
 years later to realize and bring to fruition. His greatness 
 was, of a truth, to lie in his field as statesman, his ideal of 
 service the banner under which he was to fight, that 
 soldier spirit of his ancestors fighting for justice and free- 
 dom no less as statesman than as soldier. In a few 
 months now, this care-free life he had lived under his 
 brother's roof would be over; the battle of life begun, 
 a battle never to cease until he would be laid to rest on 
 that very hillside. Beyond the thin blue line of moun- 
 tains lay his destiny, the winding road that by devious 
 ways would after many years of wandering bring him to 
 his goal. Loyalty and selflessness, service and singleness 
 of purpose were the ideal by which he was to live, his 
 blue-gray eyes forever set beyond those distant mountain 
 heights caught in the golden mists of his ever broadening 
 vision. 
 
 With a deep-breathed sigh the lad drank in once more 
 the beauty of the scene about him. As he turned slowly 
 to retrace his steps toward the house, he saw as in a 
 dream the autumn and its beauty fade into the stillness 
 of snow-clad hills edged by an ice-bound river. With his 
 
Boy Founder of American Liberty 81 
 
 keen analytic mind, he pierced the ice, knowing that be- 
 neath, the water still moved seaward, while the naked 
 trees listened in hushed wonder for spring's burgeoning. 
 Then, with the first murmurings of spring, he too would 
 be striking the trail across the mountains. At the moment 
 he knew not what life held for him at the end of the trail, 
 save in vague, shadowy dreams, dreams holding the 
 earnest of a life given in his country's service. Yet, 
 beyond the bend of the gleaming river and the dark line 
 of the autumn-tinted trees brooding in the awed expec- 
 tancy of the October sunlight, a nation lay dreaming, 
 waiting to be born. 
 
CHATTERTON— THE MARVELLOUS BOY 
 
 A WARM September sun of the year of 1763 streamed 
 through the leaded windows of the minument room 
 of St. Mary Redcliffe, touching the blackened beams here 
 and there with color as the light caught in a bit of stained 
 glass with which the windows had been partially filled in. 
 Within the circle of the sunlight, beside an iron-bound 
 chest, knelt a boy of eleven, his head bent over a yellowed 
 manuscript upon which he was busily engaged transcrib- 
 ing bit by bit the old black-lettered parchment stretched 
 upon the chest lid serving him as a desk. He might have 
 been a monk working in his scriptorium, his blue-coat uni- 
 form not unlike the monkish habit. His blue-coat dress 
 became his sturdy figure, its simplicity showing to ad- 
 vantage the proudly-poised head crowned by thick masses 
 of dark, clustering hair. 
 
 He paused in his work to compare the two manu- 
 scripts, and the result seemed to please him, for he 
 laughed softly to himself. He turned back to his copy- 
 ing from the yellowed parchment lying on the chest, — 
 a bare record of Mr. Canynge's history, his founding of 
 Bristol, his wealth and his munificence, his four terms 
 of office as mayor, his payment of the fine imposed upon 
 the town by Edward III. after the Wars of the Roses, 
 his taking holy orders in his old age, and his subsequent 
 consecration of his fortune to the building of St. Mary 
 Redcliffe. Again the boy looked up, and this time he 
 
 82 
 
The Marvellous Boy 83 
 
 frowned. The bare record of the man's life was there. 
 But where were the bits that went toward the making of 
 the mosaic whole? The boy's eyes travelling slowly 
 among the patched glass in the windows, rested upon the 
 broken figure of a haloed saint. The light in his gray 
 eyes deepened, and a faint red flushed his cheeks. His 
 heart beat faster, and he laughed a gay little laugh, start- 
 ling the dust-gray rafters. Why should he not supply 
 these missing details, fill in those colored bits even as the 
 window? Perhaps too, it might be the means of bring- 
 ing in a few shillings to line his empty purse. He picked 
 up his quill in his slim, pointed fingers, and began to 
 write again with slow, painstaking strokes, pausing now 
 and then to compare his lettering with the original. 
 
 Glancing up, his eyes wandered dreamily toward the 
 window flooded by the rich beauty of the sunlight, a ten- 
 der radiance suffusing his sensitive, finely-modeled face, 
 a face reflectant of the April moods that swept his tur- 
 bulent spirit, its strength and its weakness gathered in the 
 firm lines of the passionate, sullen mouth. His mind 
 swept back to feudal times in which he most truly lived, 
 stimulating as they did his inherent love and reverence 
 for the past, satisfying his love of lavish display also. 
 For this boy, whom none understood, least of all his 
 mother, was of necessity driven in upon himself, his life 
 of the imagination coming to him partly by the circum- 
 stances of his life, partly by inheritance, his sexton an- 
 cestors having bestowed upon the boy a store of antique 
 associations together with an instinctive veneration for 
 St. Mary Redcliffe, which they had guarded for one hun- 
 dred and fifty years. He sighed, bending once more to his 
 work, this time not to pause until the cool gray twilight 
 creeping in through the windows forced him to lay aside 
 his pen. In the fading light he held up the two pieces of 
 
84 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 parchment. Of a truth it was a fair copy. With a little 
 laugh the boy opened the chest laying his writing materials 
 and the manuscripts within. Then locking the chest care- 
 fully, he glided silently from the room, and down the 
 winding stairs, out into the twilight settling upon the 
 town. 
 
 II 
 
 Mr. Burgum sat at his bench in his tiny shop in 
 Temple Street, finishing off a large pewter porringer. 
 His trade as a pewterer came to him as an inheritance. 
 His father and his grandfather before him had sat on the 
 very bench on which he now sat, had looked out through 
 that same shop window filled with its array of shining 
 pewter. 
 
 "I met Barrett at the Inn yestereven," he remarked 
 turning his bullet head toward his partner, Mr. Catcott, 
 who was busily burnishing a handsome tankard. "He's 
 full of his history." 
 
 "He's womanish the way he loves to poke in dusty 
 corners," George Catcott answered without looking up. 
 "Has he discovered anything new ?" 
 
 "He has his framework. Now he delves for detail 
 which is a more difficult matter." 
 
 "Aye, the crumbs that make the loaf are easily scat- 
 tered." 
 
 "Would that Squire Colston's gold was as free as his 
 orders," Burgum broke in. "It's the crumbs in this trade 
 I'm thinking." 
 
 "His reckoning grows heavy. But it is meet that we of 
 the middle classes should wait upon the rich." 
 
 Burgum's mild blue eyes narrowed. 
 
 "I'm a plain man, Catcott, I do not deny," he said, 
 
The Marvellous Boy 85 
 
 flaring like a candle flame. "But I wait not upon the rich 
 for charity." 
 
 Catcott laughed noisily. 
 
 "You were ever a close-fisted knave, Burgum. The 
 money is safe enough. Great bodies move slowly, that is 
 all." 
 
 "Your wit is nimble like your reverend brother's, if not 
 quite so fine, Catcott," Burgum grumbled, fitting the 
 handle neatly to the porringer. 
 
 "Mayhap. I never aimed to be of the aristocracy," 
 Catcott answered good humoredly. "Our pockets would 
 be poorly lined were it not for the Squire." 
 
 "Expectation is a poor lining to keep out the cold," 
 Burgum answered shortly. "No fleece linings for me." 
 
 A gust of wind sweeping across the shop made them 
 turn to see a man rainsoaked and blown enter, shutting 
 the door quickly behind him. 
 
 "Welcome to you, Barrett," Burgum and Catcott called 
 out warmly. "What are you doing out on such a day?" 
 
 "The widow Chatterton is ill, and sent for me." 
 
 "Nothing likely to take her off, I hope ?" Catcott asked 
 quickly. "She is much needed." 
 
 "No, no. A temporary disorder. She is somewhat 
 troubled about that eldest boy of hers." 
 
 "Thomas?" 
 
 "Yes. He's a strange lad, and difficult; delights in 
 solitude, is moody and sullen. Yet, he is an affectionate 
 boy, and loves his mother devotedly." 
 
 "I've heard he takes to verse and luxurious habits," 
 Burgum ventured, picking up the porringer which he had 
 laid aside on Barrett's entrance. "Tell me," he added 
 after a pause, "how goes the history?" 
 
86 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 Barrett frowned, passing his slim surgeon's fingers 
 through his hair. 
 
 "I have the main facts, but as for details about 
 Canynge, I can find no trace." 
 
 "Have you searched the records at the Town Hall?" 
 
 "All, but what they give is meagre and unsatisfying. 
 In truth, I am at a standstill. Ah! here comes your 
 reverend brother, George. Come to prove your theory of 
 the Deluge, Alec?" he asked shaking hands with the 
 fair-haired man who now entered as rainsoaked as he 
 himself had been. 
 
 The reverend Alexander Catcott sank into a chair. 
 
 "Hardly that," he answered with pompous gravity. 
 "The Deluge is too wet a subject to discuss on a day 
 like this. I have been visiting one of my flock." 
 
 "The Deluge and his fossils are reserved for lawn 
 parties," George interposed with a laugh. 
 
 "You lead your flock into a green pasture and give 
 them stones for food?" Barrett asked, taking up the 
 thread. 
 
 "Intellectual food, my dear Barrett, intellectual food! 
 One must choose one's listeners, of course," Mr. Catcott 
 answered sententiously. 
 
 "I am a plain man. Good honest ale and English beef 
 for me," Burgum said dryly. "You and Barrett may feed 
 on the dry dust of the past and call it intellectual food 
 if you like." 
 
 "There's nothing dry about the Noachian theory of 
 the Deluge, Burgum/' Mr. Catcott began. 
 
 "Not if it's like the deluge outside," Barrett laughed 
 as he wheeled round as a gust of wind blew across the 
 shop. "Why it is Thomas Chatterton. Come in, my lad. 
 Your mother's not sent for me again?" He held out 
 his hand to the Blue-coat boy. 
 
The Marvellous Boy 87 
 
 "No, sir, thank you," Chatterton answered taking the 
 proffered hand and bowing gravely to the others. "I 
 have come to see you, Mr. Burgum." He came over to 
 where the pewterer sat. "I have discovered a secret 
 about you." 
 
 "Indeed ! Not a skeleton, I trust ?" 
 
 "There is no room for skeletons in a plain man's 
 closet," George cut in. 
 
 "A plain man!" Chatterton echoed. "Mr. Burgum is 
 descended from one of the noblest families in England." 
 
 The pewterer started. 
 
 "You must be mistaken. I am a plain man," he an- 
 swered brusquely. 
 
 "It is true, though," Chatterton persisted. "Here is 
 the proof." He drew from beneath his cloak a manu- 
 script copy book, spreading it out upon the table. 
 
 The men gathered about him, examining the manu- 
 script critically. It was headed in large text: "AC- 
 COUNT OF THE FAMILY OF THE DE BERG- 
 HAMS, FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO 
 THIS TIME; COLLECTED FROM ORIGINAL 
 RECORDS, TOURNAMENT ROLLS, AND THE 
 HERALDS OF MARCH AND GARTER RECORDS, 
 BY T. CHATTERTON," and contained a pedigree elab- 
 orately traced up through no end of great names and 
 illustrious marriages to one "Simon de Seyncte Lyze, 
 alias Senliz," who coming over with the Conqueror, had 
 married a daughter of the Saxon chief Waltheof, and 
 became possessed of Burgham Castle in Northumberland 
 and other properties, and had been eventually created 
 Earl of Northhampton. 
 
 George whistled. 
 
 "You a plain man ! My lord !" He made a mocking 
 
88 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 bow. "I understand at last your impatience with the 
 rich." 
 
 Burgum made no reply. He stared stupidly at the 
 page before him, while Barrett and the cleric traced the 
 pedigree point by point, with the eagerness of the anti- 
 quarian. Yes, it hung together with scientific exactness. 
 Not a flaw appeared on its fair surface. 
 
 "You interest yourself in these matters, boy?" Barrett 
 asked, looking up into Chatterton's handsome face. 
 
 "I have made a most careful study of such things, 
 sir." 
 
 "How did you obtain this knowledge?" 
 
 "As the manuscript tells you, principally from original 
 records in my possession." 
 
 "How came you by them, Tom?" 
 
 "They belonged to my father, who obtained them from 
 the large coffer in the minument room of St. Mary 
 Redcliffe." 
 
 "Perhaps Thomas can assist you with those missing de- 
 tails in your history, William," the reverend Catcott 
 suggested. 
 
 Barrett's dark eyes brightened. He rubbed his hands 
 together slowly. 
 
 "Do you remember seeing among those manuscripts 
 any mention of Canynge?" he asked eagerly of the boy. 
 
 "I can supply a detailed account sir, that I have 
 gathered from fragments' here and there." 
 
 "Bring them to my office to-morrow, and you will 
 not go away unrepaid." 
 
 Chatterton's gray eyes flashed. 
 
 "To-morrow they shall be in your hands, Mr. Barrett." 
 
 "Of course you may not have anything new." 
 
 "I venture to think I shall, Mr. Barrett. Good-day, 
 sir." 
 
The Marvellous Boy 89 
 
 Burgum pleased with the honors thrust so unex- 
 pectedly upon him, slipped five shillings into Chatterton's 
 hand. 
 
 "For your trouble," he said briefly. 
 
 The Blue-coat thanked him, and with a bow went but 
 into the windswept street highly elated at the success 
 of his scheme ; most of all with the five shillings jingling 
 in his pockets. 
 
 Barrett and the reverend Alexander still discussing 
 the authenticity of certain documents relating to the 
 town's history, bid farewell to their confreres, and de- 
 parted. 
 
 "You a plain man !" George reiterated when he and 
 Burgum were left alone. "Who'd ever have thought 
 it!" 
 
 "Good honest ale and English beef for me still, 
 George," Burgum made answer as he finished riveting the 
 handle of the porringer. 
 
 "There's more than one theory now about the Deluge," 
 George commented. "There's them as gets deluged with 
 honors." 
 
 "It's a strange world, George. You can see only to 
 the next turning, and not always as far as that," Burgum 
 replied refilling his pipe. 
 
 A silence fell between them. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In the cool of a July afternoon, Chatterton lay 
 stretched upon the river bank, gazing up in dreamy con- 
 tent at the beautiful Gothic lines of St. Mary Red- 
 cliffe, which was to him the gateway through which his 
 imagination swept him into the great field of the past. 
 
 "See, Dorothy !" he exclaimed, turning to the girl 
 
90 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 seated near him on the grass, "it is as if the old church 
 smiled when the sunset light's upon it." ' 
 
 A disdainful little smile flitted across the girl's cold 
 beautiful face, 
 
 "I cannot follow your flights of fancy, Tom," she 
 answered languidly, her soul unmoved by the still beauty 
 all about. "To me it is gray stone." 
 
 Chatterton frowned, roused from his dream. 
 
 "I worship beauty whether it be found in the gray 
 stones of a church or in the Grecian lines of a girl's face," 
 he answered looking boldly into her sapphire eyes. 
 
 The girl's eyes fell before his ardent gaze, and her 
 cheeks flushed angrily. 
 
 "You think me as beautiful as that old relic of a 
 church?" she asked petulantly, eyeing him from beneath 
 her curling lashes. 
 
 "Beautiful as a goddess, rather," Chatterton answered 
 impetuously, drawing close to her. 
 
 "You are a fool," she said with a laugh, pleased in 
 spite of herself. 
 
 "At your service, madame," he answered claiming her 
 lips. 
 
 They sat silent for awhile, looking off toward the 
 Avon wending its way across the Redcliffe meadows. 
 
 "So you have left the Blue-coat School and are become 
 apprenticed to the attorney, Mr. Lambert?" Dorothy 
 Rumsey asked breaking the silence. 
 
 "Yes. It's a dog's life for one whose spirit would 
 be free." 
 
 The beauty of Bristol smiled at his vehemence. 
 
 "It is an highly honorable profession, is it not?" she 
 questioned half-teasingly. 
 
 "Highly honorable, doubtless," Chatterton replied iron- 
 
The Marvellous Boy 91 
 
 ically, "and like most exemplary things, dull and com- 
 monplace." 
 
 "You feel above the position?" the girl asked in open 
 derision. 
 
 "Any dolt can be an attorney's apprentice. But who 
 can bring back the past as I have done in the transcribing 
 of those old manuscripts of which I told you? It's 
 my cursed poverty keeps me chained." He threw back 
 his handsome head with a proud gesture, his dark eyes 
 flashing. 
 
 The bold beauty showed her pretty teeth, her soft 
 laughter floating across the meadow. 
 
 "You are such a boy, Tom," she said lightly touching 
 his cheek. "I believe you consider yourself the only 
 mind in Bristol." 
 
 Chatterton flushed. 
 
 "I must speak what is in my heart to you, Dorothy," 
 he said ruefully. "You know how I have worked through 
 
 the dark, cold winter. Now when the spring comes ," 
 
 he broke off bitterly. 
 
 Dorothy was pleased to draw him out. She loved to 
 play with this handsome boy regardless of the morrow. 
 
 "The spring? Ah! your work, I suppose. What of 
 that?" she questioned softly, her gaze lingering in the 
 dark depths of his eyes. 
 
 Chatterton, starved for sympathy, poured forth his 
 soul. He spoke with passionate eloquence of the hours 
 of toil spent in the minument room transcribing ancient 
 manuscripts. He touched on the second edition of 
 Burgum's pedigree in which he had inserted the name 
 of a poet, one John de Bergham, together with a short 
 poem by this poet in the ancient dialect — "The Ro- 
 maunte of the Cnychte" — dwelling at length on the Row- 
 
92 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 ley poems that set forth the history of Canynge, and 
 purporting to be by one Thomas Rowley, a monk of 
 Bristol, and Canynge's friend, poet-laureate, in short, 
 to this fifteenth century merchant prince. 
 
 "You have made a nobleman truly of the pewterer," 
 the girl laughingly interrupted him. 
 
 "He's still a stingy ungrammatical goose for all the 
 long pedigree I gave him," Chatterton answered with 
 scorn. "As for the Catcotts and Barrett! I weary of 
 casting pearls before swine." 
 
 "For whom do you save your pearls ?" she questioned 
 meaningly. 
 
 Chatterton, surging with his own ambitious schemes, 
 failed to catch the personal note in his companion's 
 voice. 
 
 "For the London Coffee-Houses where gather men like 
 Walpole and Goldsmith." 
 
 The girl drew back, her eyes blazing. 
 
 "You toad ! It is your mistress clad in yellow parch- 
 ment that claims your very soul. What of me whom 
 you have sworn to serve? Am I to be forgotten like 
 a cast-off toy?" 
 
 "In making a name, I can best serve you, Lady Fire- 
 fly," Chatterton retorted. "My future is to be bound 
 neither by the Avon yonder nor by Bristol Common." 
 
 "Aye, you will go to London, and there meet other 
 beauties, to whom you will swear a like devotion," she 
 taunted him. "Oh ! I hate you." Her face was flushed. 
 Her dazzling beauty stirred Chatterton to his depths. 
 
 "You female Machiavel!" he said passionately, tak- 
 ing possession of her hands and drawing her to him. 
 "God! I love you to madness in spite of your devilish 
 temper," he continued, drinking in hungrily every detail 
 of that beautiful face. 
 
The Marvellous Boy 93 
 
 The girl struggled to free herself, but he held her 
 fast. 
 
 "Dorothy," he whispered striving to kiss her lips, 
 "Dorothy, I love you, only you." His eyes were dark 
 with passion. 
 
 "And I hate," she answered, averting her face. 
 
 "My love will wither your hate," the boy cried out. 
 
 The girl shivered. She turned half toward him with 
 a swift glance. 
 
 "What of the pearls?" she flung up at him, her eye- 
 lids quivering slightly. 
 
 "The price of the pearls would be for you," he said, 
 his face close to hers. 
 
 "A poet's speech," she said, a smile flitting across her 
 face, pleased despite herself at the boy's ardent words. 
 
 "A poet's dream," he answered bitterly, releasing her 
 hands. 
 
 The sun was setting, strewing it's gold upon the 
 meadow, the gleaming river, the moss-gray spire of St. 
 Mary Redcliffe. 
 
 "We must return," Dorothy said at last breaking the 
 silence that had fallen between them. 
 
 "Why?" he asked looking deep into those eyes that 
 held him constant. 
 
 "We can't sit here forever, you foolish boy," she an- 
 swered, a note of imperiousness in her voice. 
 
 They rose, following the path across the meadow to- 
 ward the town. On the meadow's edge, Chatterton 
 touched Dorothy's arm. 
 
 "See!" he said pointing toward the east. "It was 
 there by the right of the great oak that Canynge and 
 his friends gave plays in the olden time." 
 
 "Indeed!" The girl rippled her eyebrows. "Tragedy 
 or comedy ?" 
 
94 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 The girl's scornful laugh chilled Chatterton, as if the 
 sun had disappeared under a cloud. He turned upon 
 her fiercely. 
 
 "Both. But why?" he demanded. 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "My life is set more for comedy than tragedy," she 
 answered lightly. 
 
 Chatterton looked at her long and searchingly. Had 
 he mistaken her? 
 
 "You play at comedy or burlesque?" he asked dryly 
 as they entered the town. 
 
 "Sometimes I witness both," she replied evasively. 
 
 With that they parted. 
 
 A gnawing loneliness gripped Chatterton as he wan- 
 dered aimlessly down the quaint street bordered with 
 timbered houses, the loneliness of a soul starving for 
 sympathy and being understood by none, driven in per- 
 force upon itself. He had been happy that afternoon, 
 and he had laid bare his soul to this girl, believing that 
 in her he possessed a friend to whom he might confide 
 his deepest thoughts. Had she been playing with him? 
 He flushed hotly at the thought. Perhaps she had been 
 teasing as was her wont. But the sting had driven the 
 poison deep. She was like the rest, a deceiver, a heart- 
 less coquette unable to understand. He paused to find 
 himself in the meadow again. Behind the church spire 
 a crescent moon was rising. The beauty deepened the 
 pain. For the boy's soul was filled with bitterness. 
 
 "They may try to make a fool of me," he muttered 
 defiantly, but I shall outwit them all." He flung himself 
 on the grass and sobbed. Near him the river murmured, 
 while across the still July sky a star flared and vanished 
 into the night. 
 
The Marvellous Boy 95 
 
 IV 
 
 The summer slipped away and winter came, but to 
 blossom once more into summer. It was early Septem- 
 ber, and Barrett sat in his study absorbed in the latest 
 issue of Felix Farley's Journal. Bristol was still agog 
 over the opening of the new bridge which ceremony 
 had taken place with much civic pomp a few days be- 
 fore. 
 
 Barrett read the article through twice, scrutinizing the 
 signature, "Dunhelmus Bristoliensis," before laying the 
 paper aside to fumble among the litter of papers strewing 
 his desk. 
 
 "Strange that I have found no trace of such an event 
 in my delvings among the Bristol archives," he muttered, 
 his search proving vain. 
 
 Stuffing the Journal into his pocket, he put on his hat 
 and went out. He walked rapidly eastward, nor did he 
 pause until he reached a low ivy-grown rectory where 
 dwelt its august incumbent the Reverend Alexander Cat- 
 cott. The reverend gentleman answering Barrett's 
 knock, ushered him with a hearty welcome into the 
 tiny study. 
 
 Barrett pushed the Journal into Catcott's hand. 
 
 "Have you seen it?" he asked briefly. 
 
 "The article about the old bridge ?" Catcott questioned 
 in return, recognizing the paper. "Yes. It will be a 
 useful addition to your history." 
 
 "It is strange that I have found no inkling of this in 
 my thorough searchings among the archives." 
 
 "One must delve deep for facts and fossils," Catcott 
 
96 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 answered with a laugh. "Oftentimes they lie buried 
 beneath much debris." 
 
 "True, and yet the archives have been well-preserved." 
 
 "Have you guessed the author?" 
 
 "I had thought of the boy Chatterton. But that seems 
 scarcely likely. He would not have withheld so im- 
 portant an item knowing my need." 
 
 Catcott wagged his head solemnly. 
 
 "Love of notoriety is a weakness of youth. You can- 
 not blame him too severely." 
 
 "Perhaps not. Still he knew the importance of my 
 history. I should not have prevented the publication 
 of his discovery." 
 
 "At all events, if the fellow is as clever as he seems, 
 with us lies the honor of having first recognized the 
 lad's talent." 
 
 Barrett smiled. 
 
 "True. We must exploit him as our protege. How- 
 ever I would question the lad closely as to the source 
 of his information." Barrett picked up his hat. 
 
 "You doubt the boy's sincerity?" 
 
 "Why are the archives so deficient?" Barrett asked 
 bluntly. 
 
 "With fossils, — " Catcott began. Barrett interrupted 
 him. 
 
 "Haven't time for dissertation, old chap," he said 
 with a laugh. "We can talk it over to-night at the 
 "White Hart" with George and Burgum." And he 
 was gone. 
 
 That same evening, Barrett and his fellow antiquarians, 
 Burgum and the two Catcotts, summoned Chatterton to 
 "White Hart" where it was their custom to meet to 
 discuss their hobbies, and where sometimes sitting about 
 
The Marvellous Boy 97 
 
 the fire they listened to Chatterton while he read them 
 from his Rowley poems, or perchance, his tragedy of 
 "Goddwynn" or of "Aella." 
 
 Chatterton found the four men seated as usual by 
 the fire, smoking and chatting. They made room for 
 him, motioning him to a vacant seat. 
 
 "You've brought some manuscript with you I see," 
 the reverend Catcott remarked noting the roll of parch- 
 ment under the boy's arm. 
 
 "Yes," Chatterton replied, "a few old poems I thought 
 you would be glad to hear." 
 
 "But first, Tom my lad, tell us your authority for that 
 article you wrote for Felix Farley's Journal," Barrett said 
 abruptly, his historic sense keenly alive. 
 
 Chatterton's cheeks flushed crimson, his brows knitting 
 sharply together. 
 
 "You question it, Mr. Barrett?" he retorted. 
 
 "As an historian I question everything until I have 
 the proofs," Barrett answered with slow emphasis. 
 
 "Perhaps I did not write it. Why do you fasten its 
 authorship on me?" Chatterton parried, scowling. 
 
 "It is not difficult, my boy. For a year past you 
 have brought me scraps of information for my history." 
 
 "You have not questioned these facts. However, if 
 you must know, I did write the article, and I have in my 
 possession proofs of it's authenticity." 
 
 "And that proof?" 
 
 "The original manuscript," Chatterton answered sul- 
 lenly. 
 
 "How came you by it ?" Burgum put in. 
 
 "It is of that same collection belonging to my father 
 of which I told you when I found your pedigree," Chat- 
 terton replied, turning to the pewterer. 
 
98 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 "Why did you not tell me of it? It would have pushed 
 my history forward tremendously," Barrett questioned 
 renewing the attack. 
 
 "One cannot be a pot-boy always, Mr. Barrett. I too 
 have ambitions." 
 
 "We are all human, Barrett," the reverend Catcott 
 laughed. "Facts or fossils, we would exploit as well as 
 find them." 
 
 Barrett frowned. 
 
 "We have treated you otherwise, Tom," he said, not 
 heeding the interruption. "We have interested our- 
 selves in your career, and have even put money in your 
 way." 
 
 "Perhaps for your own ends rather than to help me, 
 sir. I have my own way to hew. Think you that to 
 catch the ear of Bristol alone will satisfy?"' 
 
 "Pray what will? Think you to set the Thames 
 afire?" the surgeon asked bitingly. 
 
 Chatterton rose abruptly, his head tossed back defiant. 
 
 "I not only think, I know. For the fuse that will 
 set it aflame is already lighted." 
 
 "You grow boastful, Tom." 
 
 "Who would not with a letter of one Horace Walpole 
 in his possession ?" 
 
 "Horace Walpole !" the men gasped. 
 
 "None other, gentlemen. You would have proof?" 
 he asked ironically, drawing the letter from his pocket 
 and handing it to Barrett. "It is in reply to one of 
 mine own penning in which I enclosed him some of my 
 Rowley poems," Chatterton added by way of explanation. 
 
 Barrett read the letter aloud. It ran as follows : 
 
 "Arlington St., March 28, 1769. 
 "Sir—I cannot but think myself singularly obliged by a gentle- 
 man with whom I have not the pleasure of being acquainted, 
 
The Marvellous Boy 99 
 
 when I read your very curious and kind letter, which I have 
 this minute received. I give you a thousand thanks for it, and 
 for the very obliging offer you make of communicating your 
 manuscript tome. What you have already sent me is valuable, 
 and full of information; but, instead of correcting you, sir, 
 you are far more, able to correct me. I have not the happiness 
 of understanding the Saxon language, and, without your learned 
 notes, should not have been able to comprehend Rowley's text. 
 
 "As a second edition of my ANECDOTES was published 
 last year, I must not flatter myself that a third will be_ wanted 
 soon; but I shall be happy to lay up any notices you will be so 
 good as to extract for me and send me at your leisure; for, as 
 it is uncertain when I may use them, I would by no means bor- 
 row or detain your MSS. 
 
 "Give me leave to ask you where Rowley's poems are to be 
 found. I should not be sorry to print them, or at least a speci- 
 men of them, if they have never been printed. 
 
 "The Abbot John's verses that you have given me are won- 
 derful for their harmony and spirit, though there are some words 
 that I do not understand. You do not point out exactly the time 
 when he lived; which I wish to know, as I suppose it was long 
 before John van Eyck's discovery of oil-painting: if so, it con- 
 firms what I have guessed and hinted in my ANECDOTES, 
 that oil-painting was known here much earlier than that dis- 
 covery or revival. 
 
 "I will not trouble you with more questions now, Sir; but 
 flatter myself, from the urbanity and politeness you have al- 
 ready shown me, that you will give me leave to consult you. 
 I hope, too, you will forgive the simplicity of my direction, as 
 you have favored me with none other. 
 
 "I am, sir, your much obliged and obedient servant, 
 
 "Horace Walpole. 
 
 "P.S. — Be so good as to direct to Mr. Walpole, Arlington 
 Street." 
 
 When he had 6nished, Barrett handed Chatterton back 
 the letter. 
 
 "You are fortunate, my lad, to have won the interest 
 of so great a man," he said generously. "I trust the 
 interest will not cool as suddenly as it was aroused." 
 
 Chatterton was exultant. 
 
 "He did not demand proofs. He knew at once my 
 manuscripts were genuine." 
 
 "He is not an historian," Barrett answered with 
 hauteur. 
 
 Chatterton raised his eyebrows. 
 
ioo A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 "Mr. Walpole's antiquarian knowledge is as London 
 is to Bristol," he said coolly replacing the letter in his 
 pocket. "Good-evening, gentlemen." With a triumphant 
 bow he turned on his heel and left them. 
 
 "Our eaglet would soar high," George Catcott re- 
 marked from his corner of the fire. 
 
 "A damned ungrateful beggar, I call him," Burgum 
 grumbled. 
 
 Barrett rubbed his slim white hands thoughtfully to- 
 gether, and stared into the fire. 
 
 "It will not do to clip his wings," he said at last. 
 "When he has hit the sun, maybe he will be content 
 to roost on common earth awhile." 
 
 Alexander Catcott shook his head. 
 
 "I give him one more year of Bristol. The bait Wal- 
 pole has thrown will be swallowed whole, not nibbled." 
 
 "He will feel the hook afterwards," his brother re- 
 joined jocosely. 
 
 "Mayhap. Experience is a great teacher," the cleric 
 answered sententiously. "But I must home and burn a 
 candle or two over my fossils before turning in," he 
 added as he rose to go. 
 
 "Don't burn them at both ends," George put in face- 
 tiously. 
 
 Barrett rose also. 
 
 "I will go along with you as far as the church, Alec. 
 I also have some work to do before retiring." 
 
 Thus the cronies parted for the night. 
 
 A year later, these same four men were seated in their 
 accustomed places before the Inn fire. 
 
 "I was a prophet," the reverend Alexander Catcott 
 was saying. "I gave the boy a year more in Bristol be- 
 fore he would break his moorings." 
 
The Marvellous Boy 101 
 
 "Tom must be mad," Barrett answered folding up a 
 letter he had been reading to the others. 
 
 "You have seen the lad ?" Burgum asked. 
 
 "Yes, and striven with him." 
 
 "To what effect?" George inquired dryly. 
 
 Barrett shook his head. 
 
 "Little I fear, though he was moved to tears. Poor 
 boy ! I can but pity him." 
 
 "Pity him!" Burgum snorted. "Why should one pity 
 a fool?" 
 
 "No fool, but a genius. You may call it a misfortune 
 if you like," Barrett interposed kindly. "We must not 
 be too hard on the boy." 
 
 "Did he give any reason for his folly?" the reverend 
 Catcott questioned. 
 
 "An uncongenial occupation." 
 
 "There are many such," Burgum grumbled. 
 
 "Aye. But with Tom's proud nature it drives to mad- 
 ness. His soul is tortured. He cried out to me that 
 he 'must either live a slave, a servant to have no will 
 of my own which I may freely declare as such, or 
 DIE'." 
 
 "What do you purpose doing in the matter?" his 
 reverence asked. 
 
 "I propose that we give the lad a chance, send him to 
 London where he may try his wings," Barrett an- 
 swered heartily. 
 
 "Why should not Bristol be large enough for him as 
 well as for us?" Burgum muttered, his fingers closing 
 involuntarily over his purse. 
 
 "Should he succeed, the glory would accrue to Bristol, 
 and the credit to us who recognized genius in the 
 smouldering flame," Alexander Catcott put in pompously. 
 
102 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 "I side with Barrett. The lad should be given a chance. 
 You can count on me for a contribution toward the 
 boy's outfit and the expenses of the journey, Barrett." 
 
 "Thanks, Catcott. I knew I could count on you." 
 
 "Of course if you think it best," Burgum said grudg- 
 ingly, "you can count on me also." 
 
 "I'm in this too," George added quickly, knocking 
 the ashes from his pipe. 
 
 So it was settled, and a week later Chatterton, his 
 eyes alight, bid farewell to Bristol, setting his face to- 
 ward London. 
 
 V 
 
 Chatterton sat at his attic window, gazing out into 
 the sultry August night. His pale face rested on his 
 hands ; his bold, gray eyes burned feverishly. He leaned 
 out stifled by the closeness of his room only to feel the 
 foul air steeped with the stench of uncleaned streets 
 beat upon his face. It was late, and Brooke Street was 
 quiet, sleeping despite the squalor and the misery tucked 
 away within its tumbledown houses. Presently the still- 
 ness was rudely broken as a man and woman reeled 
 round the corner singing snatches of a song. Chatter- 
 ton surveyed them, a bitter smile playing about his thin 
 set lips. At least they had purchased temporary for- 
 getfulness, while he, who had not tasted food for two 
 days struggled with despair. "Oh, God! was there 
 nothing could still that gnawing agony?" he cried out. 
 "Was this the end of all his dreams? to starve like a 
 rat in a garret because a few self-centered editors and 
 publishers closed their doors in his face ?" His thoughts 
 swept rapidly over the four months he had been in 
 London, — months of roseate hopes that had faded one 
 by one, months when he had buoyed himself up by 
 
The Marvellous Boy 103 
 
 writing brave letters home, letters in which he magnified 
 a meagre success with the skill of a boaster perhaps, 
 yet letters thrilling with a spirit that would never admit 
 itself conquered. He recalled his first interview with 
 Fell, publisher of the "Freeholder's Magazine," when 
 Fell had opened the pages of the magazine to him, promis- 
 ing as remuneration his patronage and an introduction 
 to Wilkes, who Fell insisted possessed a high opinion 
 of him. The words rang ironically in his ears now. 
 "Chatterton only eighteen! Upon my soul, I don't be- 
 lieve it. So young a man could not write like this." 
 Chatterton laughed bitterly as he thought of that vanished 
 dream. The flattery had been sweet, but Fell had gone 
 to prison for his liberal views instead of introducing 
 him to Wilkes. 
 
 Below in the street the drunken song rose and fell, 
 interlarded with soulless laughter and ribald jest. Chat- 
 terton's face hardened. So this was life! a hopeless 
 struggle, a tuneless thing like the drunken song quaver- 
 ing up to him from the sultry street, and ending how? 
 He felt the pangs of hunger, and thought of his empty 
 purse; of Edmunds, of Hamilton and the rest who bade 
 him feed on paltry honors and be thankful that he got 
 into print at all, or paid him such a pittance as would 
 scarce feed a sparrow, caring little whether he starved 
 or not. 
 
 "An artist works not for recompense," he remembered 
 Hamilton answered when he had asked for a larger 
 honorarium. 
 
 "An artist must live," he had answered. But Hamilton 
 had shrugged his shoulders, bidding him ply his trade 
 elsewhere if the terms suited him not. 
 
 Even Beckford, the Lord Mayor, who had taken some 
 interest in him, and through whose influence he had 
 
104 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 gained entrance to two political papers, had died inop- 
 portunely. He recalled the glowing description he had 
 written home, of his visit to the Lord Mayor's house, and 
 his laugh rang out into the night like a startled echo 
 of that rude laughter in the narrow street. Why not 
 end it all, instead of beating his life out against fate's 
 iron bars ? All the avenues through which he had hoped 
 to win freedom had closed in upon him one by one. 
 August had come with its heat and dullness. Business 
 was at a standstill; editors and publishers were away, 
 their magazines were overstocked; the Coffee-Houses 
 were empty: from them there was no hope. How was 
 he to live? How tell his mother of his condition? That 
 cut most of all. The sodden pair in the street had 
 moved away, the night quiet reigned once more along 
 its narrow, ill-lighted windings. The boy's mood softened 
 as he thought of his mother, and his eyes sought the 
 silence of the summer stars. She had been so proud 
 of him, though she had never understood him. Oh, God ! 
 she must not know. 
 
 What of the Rowley poems which he had loved with 
 all his deep passionate nature? His eyes grew dark 
 and wild. He thought of the meadow behind St. Mary 
 Redcliffe on a certain moonlight night, the color flood- 
 ing his pale cheeks as he thought of Dorothy Rumsey, 
 and heard her bantering laughter mingling with the 
 sneers of half Bristol. No f no. They should never 
 know his shame. He would end it all that night. He 
 would die unknown in his garret room. He took out 
 a little phial from his pocket, fingering it lovingly. After 
 all, there was a way of escape from which none could 
 cheat him. He glanced up again at the quiet sky, where 
 on the horizon's rim there gathered an ink black cloud. 
 
The Marvellous Boy 105 
 
 To his fevered fancy it seemed symbolic. Trilly he sat 
 "throned in a broken chair within an inch of a thunder- 
 cloud." To-night he would outwit the thunder-cloud. 
 When it burst, he would have escaped the deluge. He 
 turned back into the stifling room. The floor was strewn 
 with papers; the table where he had been writing, was 
 littered with half written sheets. By the feeble rays 
 of his sputtering candle he made his way to the door 
 and barred it, listening intently. No one stirred. When 
 he had come in fagged and weary that afternoon after a 
 day of fruitless tramping, his landlady had invited him 
 to dine. He had refused, though his empty stomach had 
 cried out against such foolish pride. Now he feared 
 she might come again to his door. But all was still. She 
 slept unsuspecting. He turned back to the bed and 
 sat down, a set smile upon his lips. 
 
 "To Bristol and the dolts of London !" he said grimly, 
 lifting the phial with a mocking gesture, and quaffing its 
 contents. 
 
 He sat as one transfixed watching the sputtering 
 candle on the table. The phial slipped from his nerve- 
 less fingers, and suddenly the guttering candle flickered 
 and went out. From out the heart of the darkness 
 there fluttered a deep sigh. Silence again. Presently 
 the tenseness of that silence was broken by the soft thud 
 of a body. Then all was still. Across the night sky 
 a star sped its course, and dropped glowing into the 
 threatening west. 
 
 VI 
 
 "Who is this fellow Thomas Chatterton to whose 
 memory this doggerel verse is penned?" Johnson asked 
 laying aside the October number of "Town and Country." 
 
106 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 "A youth of genius who rather than face starvation, 
 committed suicide last August," Goldsmith answered 
 gently. "Oh, the pity of it! Had I only known!" 
 
 "Did hack work for the magazines on starvation 
 wages ?" Walpole asked lightly as he puffed his pipe con- 
 tentedly. 
 
 The three men had gathered about the fire of the 
 Gerard Club, — their first meeting since they had separated 
 for the summer vacation. 
 
 "More than that, judging from what I have learned. 
 He was also a transcriber of various ancient pieces of 
 poetry. Indeed, it is a marvellous treasure the boy 
 unearthed," Goldsmith added, waxing enthusiastic. 
 
 Johnson laughed. 
 
 "You're always unearthing treasures, Goldy. Where 
 is your proof that they are genuine?" 
 
 "I have been in communication with a Mr. Catcott of 
 Bristol who knew the boy." 
 
 "Bristol?" Walpole exclaimed, pricking up his ears. 
 "I seem to recall having had some correspondance with 
 a Bristolian about some ancient poems. What did you 
 say the lad's name was?" 
 
 "Chatterton, — Thomas Chatterton." 
 
 "Ah ! I remember now. A peppery lad ! He sent me 
 a bundle of poems purporting them to be transcriptions 
 from some old manuscripts composed three hundred 
 years ago by one Thomas Rowley, a priest of Bristol." 
 
 "You have seen them, then ?" Johnson questioned. 
 
 "Yes, and might have had the honor of ushering the 
 great discovery to the learned world," Walpole answered, 
 a touch of irony in his voice. 
 
 "Why didn't you?" Johnson demanded bluntly. 
 
 "I was not sure of their authenticity for one thing. 
 I held them for awhile, thinking to investigate the matter 
 
The Marvellous Boy 107 
 
 further. Then I went abroad and, in fact, forgot them." 
 
 "You never sent them back?" 
 
 Walpole nodded, an amused smile overspreading his 
 face. 
 
 "On my return, I found two impertinent letters from 
 the young cub summarily demanding them. I packed 
 the manuscripts off to him without more ado, and there 
 the matter ended. You say the boy killed himself?" 
 
 "Yes, too proud to beg, too proud to admit his failure 
 at home, he took poison in a Brooke Street garret." 
 
 "If I had only known," Walpole groaned. "Have 
 you seen any of the poems ?" he asked after a pause. 
 
 "I secured this one from the fellow Catcott," Gold- 
 smith answered, drawing a manuscript from his pocket. 
 It was the "Song of the Bereaved Maiden" in "Aella." 
 
 "You say the lad was but eighteen?" Johnson queried, 
 more incredulous after the reading of the poem than 
 before. 
 
 "But eighteen," Goldsmith assented. "Truly a marvel- 
 lous boy !" 
 
 "He is the most extraordinary young man that has 
 encountered my knowledge: it is wonderful how the 
 young whelp has written such things," Johnson replied, 
 skepticism still lingering in his voice. 
 
 "Egad! a star hath flashed across our horizon and 
 hath vanished while London slept," Walpole commented, 
 his eyes resting upon the stained and yellowed parch- 
 ment. "Starved in a garret, and I might have saved 
 him," he repeated huskily, turning away. 
 
 Johnson stared silently into the fire; but Goldsmith's 
 eyes were wet with sudden tears. 
 
BLAKE— THE BOY OF THE LONDON STREETS 
 
 PARS DRAWING SCHOOL was disgorging itself 
 for the noon hour's rest. From every floor of the 
 ramshackle old building, students were making their 
 way out into the sunbaked London street. The room 
 on the second floor seemed at a first glance empty ; even 
 the model had gone: yet in a far corner across the ir- 
 regular line of easels stood a boy working still over a 
 charcoal drawing of a nude figure, a figure that despite 
 its crudeness and half finished state, revealed the power 
 of the master touch. Motion, free and beautiful, ex- 
 pressed itself in the long curved lines, in the swirl, in 
 the originality and certain strangeness of the conception, 
 in the depth of interpretation lurking behind those few 
 firm lines. The drawing master had seen only that the 
 drawing did not measure up to conventional standards. 
 The drawing was out, the figure of the model had pos- 
 sessed no such freedom of motion. He had rebuked the 
 Boy severely for his inaccuracy and inattention, brush- 
 ing aside the Boy's protest that "he saw it that way." 
 
 "Learn to see it as it is. Do it over, or go," the master 
 had snapped as he left the room. 
 
 A pained expression still rested on the sensitive face of 
 the Boy, but the mouth had set into a thin line; in the 
 dreamy, dark eyes a fire still smouldered. He would 
 draw the thing as he saw it, or not at all. He was 
 poorly clad, this brown-haired Boy of the London streets ; 
 yet he was neat. His coat was threadbare, but carefully 
 brushed. His shoes were patched and scuffed, but whole. 
 
The Boy of the London Streets 109 
 
 His face was white and pinched; his features heavy, 
 marking him of the people : but it was a mobile face with 
 no suggestion of peasant stolidity. A poet's sensitiveness 
 lurked there, a sensitiveness that registered the swift 
 play of moods that swept him. 
 
 He yawned, stretched himself, and throwing down his 
 bit of charcoal moved slowly toward the window. His 
 pocket was empty. He had no coppers to spend on 
 luncheon. He would stay where he was for the noon 
 hour rest. Through the window the June air of this year 
 of 1767 came burdened with the fragrance of far-off 
 hayfields, that dominated for the moment the close at- 
 mosphere of the smoke-bound London streets. The Boy 
 leaned against the window sniffing the air, his head 
 thrown back, his eyes wrapped in contemplation of the 
 June sky. Somewhere beyond the grimy line of chimney 
 pots lay the fields of fresh mown hay basking in the 
 June sunlight, fair fields smiling up at that same sapphire 
 sky that here in London had lost something of its lustre; 
 but the Boy was thinking neither of the grime of London, 
 nor of the sunlit world lying beyond its borders. Though 
 but fourteen, the Boy stood at a crossroads, and his mind 
 was bent upon the future and what it was to hold for him. 
 The master's words that morning had cut deep, but after 
 all they did not matter much. His work at Pars was 
 over, and it was his next step that was of importance. 
 Hope was high, his vision reaching to the stars. Yet 
 he had never known what it was not to want; necessity 
 pressed hard upon him and his family. A bread winner 
 he must be first of all. For four years he had studied 
 at Pars; now it was time he was up and doing; but 
 what? Once an artist had visited the school, and had 
 singled out his drawing from among the rest. Though 
 servile in his acquiescence, the wrath of the drawing 
 
no A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 master, whose one-legged vision could not leap the bars 
 of the conventional, was brought to bear privately upon 
 the Boy who had thus innocently overshadowed the draw- 
 ing-master's favorite pupil. Artist to the finger tips, 
 the Boy dimly realized that his work was not of a kind 
 to bring in bread and butter. It was different, dis- 
 tinctive, possessed of a splendid isolation because of 
 its strangeness, bringing with it a new message which a 
 thoughtless world must learn to interpret ; and the world 
 was never tender with those who forced it to stop and 
 think. Should he barter this heaven-born talent of his 
 for gold? The Boy's eyes flashed fire. Rather than 
 that, he would stand behind the counter of his father's 
 shop doing the work of a common drudge. Soil the gift 
 vouchsafed him by the gods ? Never. 
 
 The loneliness of the -artist had been his from baby- 
 hood, loneliness even in his home where he was regarded 
 as an exotic, a delicate flower that had somehow taken 
 root in the kitchen garden. A good, wholesome atmos- 
 phere he had grown up in, yet totally uncongenial. No 
 one understood him, and he lacked that communion of 
 spirit for which he yearned, that sympathy which was in 
 part accorded him by the gentle, devoted mother. She 
 it was who encouraged in him his love of art, of design- 
 ing and sketching even though she failed to understand 
 the depth of its significance. Her mother instinct recog- 
 nized that this Boy was of finer mould than the rest, 
 that for him the future held other things than the daily 
 round of their tiny, fog-bound world. Thus possessed 
 with a blind faith, she gave the Boy of her sympathy 
 despite the fact that she failed to understand him. At 
 ten the Boy had been proclaimed an artist; at twelve, 
 a poet: but of his visions the Boy had ceased to speak 
 altogether, it having been forced home upon him very 
 
Xhe Boy of the London Streets in 
 
 early that others did not see the things he saw. They 
 ridiculed him, calling him an idle dreamer. So the 
 sensitive Boy had crept more and more into himself, 
 dwelling in an isle of dreams and visions that already 
 he had begun to express not only in his drawings and 
 designs in which his thought was clothed in symbols, 
 but also in verse, rude but melodious, full of fine thought 
 and pervaded with "a deep and peculiar feeling." Often 
 the Boy composed simple yet characteristic music for his 
 songs, his gift expressing itself thus in a three-fold 
 language, making him unique and giving him almost un- 
 limited freedom in the unfolding of his thought. To the 
 Boy, this world of the imagination was "the world of 
 Eternity, a real world to which he gained entrance in 
 a glowing flash of intuition, a haven of refuge where 
 he could find true beauty," where the thirst of his soul 
 might for the moment be assuaged. A passion for 
 beauty had dominated the Boy always, and the attitude 
 of childlike wonder that he portrayed toward life revealed 
 the poet in him. Later he would realize that his sensi- 
 tiveness to the influence of the imagination was, as it 
 was everyman's, his nearest approach to truth. In these 
 Songs of Innocence, which with characteristic unique- 
 ness, he often set to music, he, all unknowing, was 
 giving expression of that age of exquisite illusion when 
 "life is a thing not to be reasoned about, but the world 
 is a toy of the imagination, and the delicately colored 
 visions of the child are the only real things of life." 
 Thus in verse, he was already expressing the haunting 
 beauty of childhood, — "the fleeting of a smile, in the 
 same manner as do the porcelains of Lucca della Robbia." 
 Lonely, forced in upon himself, the Boy entered "into 
 Noah's rainbow, making a friend and a companion of 
 one of these images of wonder which always entreat 
 
112 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 him to leave mortal things." His "was the voice of 
 wisdom in a child, who had not yet forgotten the world 
 out of which the soul came," a "voice as spontaneous 
 as the note of a bird, an affirmation of life ; in its song, 
 which seemed mere music, it was the mind which sang.; 
 it was lyric thought." He felt himself under the direction 
 of heavenly messengers, daily and nightly, and in the 
 light of visions did he traverse a marvellous country 
 whose entrance gate few find, or in finding fail to recog- 
 nize, their blindness unable to penetrate into that inner 
 shrine of a poet's world. 
 
 Once his mother had taken him to Westminster Abbey, 
 a place so steeped in beauty that ecstacy had filled his 
 soul. He had sat wrapped, his eyes drinking in the 
 beauty of those unsurpassed architectural lines, his ears 
 filled with the wonderful tones of the organ until the 
 people about him had faded and a vision had come to him 
 of Christ and the Apostles clothed in shimmering white- 
 ness. When his mother touched him, he had followed 
 her silently, his eyes still upon the wonders he had wit- 
 nessed; but for his abstraction, he offered no explana- 
 tion nor excuse. Derisive laughter or an attitude of 
 scornful scepticism, even more unbearable, would greet 
 his words. Experience had taught him that. Only a * 
 few days before, his father had taken him to the famous 
 engraver Ryland with the idea of apprenticing the Boy 
 to him. When the Boy and his father had gotten out- 
 side after the interview, the Boy had said : "Father, I'd 
 rather be apprenticed to Basire. I don't like Ryland's 
 face." Pressed for an answer, the Boy had merely an- 
 swered : "His face looks as if he will live to be hanged" 
 — a prophecy ridiculed at the moment, that was to be 
 fulfilled some twelve years later. 
 
 The Boy's father was a hosier, and but for his mother's 
 
The Boy of the London Streets 113 
 
 pleadings the Boy's destiny would have been the shop 
 instead of Pars Drawing School. He had always loathed 
 the dingy shop, which represented to him always the 
 very essence of the Philistinism his soul abhorred, an 
 atmosphere atrophying perforce because of its unrelieved 
 persistence, denying thus the needed "liberty of body and 
 mind to exercise the divine arts of Imagination." The 
 thraldom of the shop had loomed before him even during 
 these years at Pars; for it could not be expected that 
 he should be a burden to his father who had many mouths 
 to feed on a slim purse. Yet, the father's pride in the 
 Boy, stirred by the praise of the artist who had seen the 
 Boy's work at Pars, and who had strongly advocated 
 the Boy's taking up painting as a profession, now offered 
 the Boy the possibility of this career which was his 
 very life. That it meant an enormous sacrifice, the 
 Boy knew well; and the noble generosity of the offer, 
 now that the golden apple lay within his grasp, made 
 him hold back. He shrank from accepting so great a 
 sacrifice. Was there no way out? No road by which 
 he could climb to his goal without the tremendous 
 cost? Designing had always been his forte, his mind 
 clothing his thought by means of symbolic figures. If 
 he apprenticed himself to the engraver Basire, it would 
 be an outlet by which he might give expression to the 
 thoughts surging within him, a medium in which he 
 might even introduce color when he became a master of 
 his art. Yet the world of color in which the painter 
 dwelt drew him almost irresistibly. 
 
 The Boy was essentially a gamin of the London streets, 
 their fog and grime part of his bone and sinew; yet 
 to the lad they were woven into delicate webs of colored 
 mystery. Touched by his imagination, the fog was 
 color-shot with beauty, Celtic in its haunting elusiveness. 
 
H4 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 From the London streets the Boy had gotten his first 
 outlook on life, and from that vantage ground, he 
 viewed the city life in all its rich variety stream past 
 him. It had led him to the door of the Coffee Houses 
 where he had watched all the great lights of the London 
 art world, especially the men of letters, pass in and out, — 
 Goldsmith, Gray, Johnson, Wordsworth, Chatterton ; now 
 and again he caught the spindrift of their talk. It stirred 
 up in him an intense longing for knowledge, and such 
 books as he could get he devoured hungrily. Once Gold- 
 smith, attracted by the eager, sensitive face, had paused 
 by the door to speak with the little lad, and finding the 
 Boy hungry for books had loaned him a copy of Ossian. 
 It marked a turning point in the Boy's career. In some 
 such manner the Boy had also come to know Percy's 
 Reliques, and the Elizabethans, notably Spenser; and 
 under their spell he had written "An Island in the 
 Moon," — full of imaginative power. 
 
 There was another aspect of the London streets with 
 which he was infinitely more familiar, cutting a more 
 indelible impression on the mind of the child, coloring his 
 whole life; for the Boy at best touched but the fringe 
 of London's literary life with its gay gatherings at the 
 Coffee Houses. Naturally speculative, the Boy from 
 babyhood had jSrobed, had striven to analyze those things, 
 which forcing themselves upon his consciousness, gave 
 him no rest until the problem they presented had been 
 solved. Caused partly by his surroundings, for he was 
 a child of the slums, the problem of good and evil was 
 forced in upon him early, a problem that was never to 
 cease troubling him, a riddle of the Sphinx that would 
 haunt him always, that mystery and that warring of 
 elements which later he was to interpret in symbolic 
 figures of wood into which he had breathed the very 
 
The Boy of the London Streets 115 
 
 breath of life. Yet this Boy, who from circumstance 
 saw and knew so much of life in the raw, life in all 
 its tawdry unloveliness, was possessed of a deep spiritu- 
 ality that would hold him ever apart. Tinged inevitably 
 with the dark tragedy of life, its pitilessness, its in- 
 equality, he was not overcome by it. Beyond the Gate 
 of Horn there lay forever bright a spaceless country 
 wherein his spirit dwelt, a place where no dark cloud 
 might dim the crystal beauty of his vision. There he 
 was the joyous piper of his songs, "piping down the 
 valleys wild, piping songs of pleasant glee," the ecstatic 
 child of delicate fancy whose song was spun of merry 
 laughter, and of thoughts as exquisite as the tracery 
 of a gothic window, color-shot, touched by the sun's 
 ray. He was a child lost in a poet's dream, unmindful 
 of the ribald laughter echoing down the street, of the cry 
 of the poor and of the misery haunting the evil-smelling 
 byways of London. These same streets of London 
 were to be his battle ground; for life for him would 
 always be a struggle against fearful odds, — want, lone- 
 liness, the ceaseless toil of the artist striving to make 
 his voice heard above the din of a city's roar. Always 
 would he be struggling within the grimy line of chimney 
 pots stretching endlessly across the June sky. Yet, 
 even as the Boy standing by the window catching the 
 odor of new-mown hay, saw fields where wild flowers 
 ran riot amid tall waving grass, so would his spirit al- 
 ways soar beyond the range of the smoke-stained actual 
 into those realms of "sweetness and light" for which 
 his spirit yearned. Outwardly his life was to be bounded 
 by the drab chimney pots of fog-blurred London; but 
 his soul unfettered would never cease to reach out and 
 touch that fair world of the imagination in which he most 
 truly dwelt. This world would always lie behind the 
 
Ii6 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 beyond ; but it was there, — a possession of which no man 
 might rob him. 
 
 The sound of tramping feet aroused the Boy, and he 
 turned from the window with a sigh. The hour of 
 rest was over ; the students were returning to their work 
 in the crowded classroom. As the Boy moved slowly 
 to his place, he saw his path, not the one he most de- 
 sired, — the way of the painter, — but the way of the 
 artist still. His work at Pars was finished; he would 
 gain nothing by remaining longer. On the morrow he 
 would apprentice himself to Basire, the engraver; he 
 would by unremitting toil perfect his art ; he would strike 
 a new note in engraving by introducing color, even as his 
 conceptions would be unique, conceptions whose sym- 
 bolism only the discerning few might interpret. Quietly 
 he picked up his half-finished drawing, and went out into 
 the sunlit street, his face caught in the red glow of his 
 dreams, turned toward the future," that future of toil and 
 disappointment, want and blinding sweat; but a future 
 holding crystal clear his world of vision, the June sky 
 and the green fields lying beyond the rows of grimy 
 chimney pots. 
 
HAMILTON— THE BOY OF ST. KITTS 
 
 A DISQUIETING stillness overhung Nevis, the sultry 
 atmosphere charged with the ominous portend of 
 the coming storm, a portend that caused the Boy Alexan- 
 der, despite the August heat, to keep his horse at a 
 gallop along the superb avenue of royal palms leading 
 past the Lyttons, his uncle's estate, where he paused 
 but long enough to shout his warning of the coming 
 storm. Suddenly, despite the wall of wind at his back, 
 the horse reared, swerving to the left only just in time 
 to avoid a great palm that crashed across the road. The 
 Boy, sensitive, high-strung, shivered, though he pushed 
 on, the memory of his mother flashing before him, the 
 memory of a mother's tenderness, when he, a tiny fellow 
 had been transfixed with terror. He had been standing 
 near the shore throwing pebbles into the blue water, ab- 
 sorbed in watching the circles that he made, when of a 
 sudden he heard a swish close to the beach, followed by 
 the appearance of the white belly of a shark. Terror 
 stricken he had fled to his mother, taking refuge behind 
 her skirts. Something of that childish terror of the un- 
 seen, of the supernatural gripped the Boy now as he 
 threaded his way between the ripening fields of cane 
 and patches of woodland toward the Mitchell's, the man- 
 groves swelling the murmur of the ever rising wind, an 
 indefinable moaning at first, like the quiet sobbing of a 
 child, deepening as he passed, into the wailing of those 
 mysterious, myriad voices of the sea. As the wind rose, 
 so the Boy's struggle to accomplish his errand grew 
 
 117 
 
n8 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 fiercer, a battle between elemental forces in which the 
 Boy's indomitable will would conquer. To surmount 
 difficulty, to rise unconquered no matter what the odds, 
 was the very essence of the lad's whole nature. Born 
 a conqueror, life to this Boy of destiny, was a titanic 
 struggle, which by the sheer force of his character he 
 must overcome, must win, his unconquerable spirit to 
 be one of the living foundation stones of a great nation. 
 
 Ingrained in the Boy's nature, was British rugged- 
 ness, tenacity and stubborn oneness of purpose, the 
 heritage bestowed upon him by his Scotch father. While 
 from his mother, whom he worshipped with all the in- 
 tensity of his passionate nature, he had inherited her 
 splendid intellect, her French ardor and sparkling wit 
 and humor, a humor that bitter experience was already 
 deepening into cynicism. His dark gray eyes, so like 
 his mother's, gleamed and sparkled, as with his massive 
 head thrown back, his delicately chiseled mouth parted 
 in a smile, giving to the boyish, sunburnt fairness of his 
 face, a rare sweetness and beauty. Yet for all his 
 beauty, there was nothing effeminate nor weak in the 
 lad's face, his firm chin, sharply cut nose and full brow 
 lending strength and purposefulness. Virility marked 
 every movement of his supple, well-knit body, his proud 
 bearing and graceful carriage in no way diminished by 
 his shortness of stature. 
 
 As he raced on, striving to outstrip the whirlwind, 
 memories flooded in upon the Boy, his imagination 
 kindled to white heat as he visioned the utter desolation 
 the hurricane would leave in its wake, the wreckage of 
 all his fondest hopes and ambitions that for five years 
 had eaten at his heart, the desire to go to college that 
 he might prepare himself for a professional career. 
 From his window in his uncle Tom Mitchell's house, how 
 
The Boy of St. Kitts 119 
 
 often he had sat for hours dreaming of the future, the 
 future that lay somewhere in the mist-shrouded sea lying 
 beyond the blue line of the peaks of St. Thomas and St. 
 John, that vast untrammeled sea beyond the foam- 
 rimmed line of the sounding reef; for in the harbor of 
 Charlotte Amalie at St. Thomas, there sometimes rode 
 one hundred and eighty ships. As the Boy had stared at 
 the blue hills above her, this centre of the maritime trade 
 of the West Indies was to his kindled imagination a bit 
 of the great world for which his boyish soul yearned, 
 the first step beyond the narrow confines of his island 
 home leading out toward the great goal of his ambitions, 
 King's College and New York. From that same window, 
 too, he could see the gay Park behind the Fort; while 
 towering above the walls of Government House, his eye, 
 quick to note beauty, followed the curve of the moun- 
 tain, its shimmering green studded by the glistening 
 facades of the stone houses of the landowners, houses 
 each with its arcade and outside staircase, bearing the 
 imprint of Spanish occupation. The Boy's artist soul 
 turned ever to the mountains and the sea for solace, the 
 sea his mother had loved so passionately, and had found 
 comfort in in many a tragic hour of her shadowed life. 
 
 Alexander's proud spirit chaffed at the restraint that 
 bound him to the counting house, a life utterly distasteful 
 to him, giving him no play for his ambition, nor in- 
 tellectual recreation with his equals. His was a mind 
 that could concentrate without effort upon whatever de- 
 manded its powers, that could master the details of even 
 a hated task with incredible swiftness. Yet a boy 
 with such intellectual superiority was destined in that 
 provincial town to a lonely existence. Small men shunned 
 him for his gifted mind. They feared his brillant sallies 
 of wit as putting them at a disadvantage. Sensitive 
 
120 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 and proud, the Boy shrunk into himself, and his humor 
 deepened into cynicism. Driven in upon himself, he 
 kept his ever active brain exercised by study. With all 
 his intense energy he threw himself into the study of 
 mathematics, chemistry and history, studies which he 
 pursued under the- wise tutelage of his friend and con- 
 fidant, Hugh Knox, the man who, because of his breadth 
 of vision, became a great moulding force in the Boy's 
 life. It was he who saw the restive spirit within, and 
 who exercised patience with the Boy in his studies; he 
 who encouraged him to go on when for a moment he was 
 threatened with despair; he who, realizing the Boy's 
 high destiny, gave him untiringly of his best that the 
 Boy might be ready when the moment arrived, and go 
 forth equipped as far as possible to meet the world be- 
 yond the sea. To this end, Hugh Knox, and a glowing 
 joy gripped the Boy's heart as he dwelt for a moment 
 upon the large hearted loyalty of his friend, had for 
 five years been bringing pressure to bear especially upon 
 the Mitchells, to send Alexander to King's College. So 
 far he had failed, and the Boy's pride had been stung 
 to the quick by his uncle's persistent refusal. Hugh 
 counseled patience, registering a vow in his own mind 
 that he would never let go his demand until the Boy was 
 given his chance. The Boy's cup of bitterness over- 
 flowed when his friend, Ned Stevens, had gone a few 
 months before. Yet it made him the more determined, 
 and he doggedly hung on to his hated job in the count- 
 ing house. Only once did the Boy give way to his 
 tropical temper, it happening in this wise. Mr. Cruger, 
 the head of the counting house, had left Alexander in 
 charge while he was absent on some business enterprise. 
 Cutter, a man long in the employ of Cruger, resented 
 being placed under the authority of a mere boy, and but 
 
The Boy of St. Kitts 121 
 
 thinly veiled his insolence. Alexander paid no heed at 
 first, hoping to overcome the man's resentment. One 
 day, however, he gave Cutter an order. Instead of obey- 
 ing, Cutter coolly lighted a cigar and laughed in Alexan- 
 der's face. The Boy went blind with passion, and at 
 a bound leaped over the counter, terrorizing the man by 
 the fierceness of his passion more than by his well-placed 
 fists. Needless to say, after that the Boy's authority 
 was not again questioned; but Mr. Cruger on his return 
 sent the lad to St. Thomas on business, giving him thus 
 the first glimpse of a world other than his own, deepen- 
 ing too, his desire to stretch his wings in full flight. To 
 Hugh Knox it became daily more evident that the Boy's 
 wings could not be kept clipped much longer. Like 
 the eagle, he must have the freedom of the heights if 
 he was to grow to his full stature. He would die from 
 fretting, in captivity. 
 
 In his dark moods, the Boy sought ever the solace of 
 the sea, and down by the rock-bound shore, the Boy 
 would sit for hours dreaming of his future, his restless 
 imagination forever building, stretching out to what lay 
 just beyond the horizon's rim. Now that the first great 
 sorrow of his life had come to him, the death of his 
 mother, the Boy went more often to the sea, his lone- 
 liness bitting deep into his soul. They had been great 
 companions, this boy and his mother, and he had mourned 
 her with all the passion of a great love suddenly stripped 
 and left quivering by a sorrow that could cloak itself in 
 silence, that could give no expression nor sign of its 
 grief. 
 
 As he thought of his mother, there swept in upon him 
 the vague memory of the mist-shrouded night when his 
 mother had taken him, a tiny lad of three or four, and 
 with her three faithful slaves had rowed from Nevis to 
 
122 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 St. Kitts to give warning of the uprising of the blacks, 
 a task demanding the utmost coolness and courage; for 
 the night was opaque, with no star by which to shape the 
 course, only the roar of the surf on the outer ledges 
 to remind them of the foam-flecked monster ready to 
 prey upon them if they lost the channel. It thrilled 
 the Boy riding through the night to think of that high 
 courage of his mother's, and he remembered how, after 
 she had accomplished her task, she had walked with him 
 until dawn along the edge of the dismal swamps, the 
 atmosphere of that desolate spot, charged with eerie 
 silence, save, when at dawn, some bird rose out of the 
 marsh with its wild, weird cry. The child, wide awake, 
 and thrilled by his midnight adventure, walked by his 
 mother's side, his active little brain alive with questions 
 which only a mother's insight and patience could meet 
 and satisfy. A wonderful mother, this mother of his 
 had been, a rich, royal nature that could command the 
 passionate loyalty of her husband and this son of hers, 
 whom she early recognized as no ordinary child, the 
 flower, really, of a great and royal love. 
 
 Somehow the sobbing passion of the storm sharpened 
 these memories of his mother, for as the Boy knew welly 
 her whole life, despite the momentary flashes of sun- 
 shine illuminating it, had rested within the shadow of 
 Mount Misery, beneath whose lofty peak she had been 
 born, a child coming unwelcome into a home from whence 
 love had vanished. Her home had faced the sea to 
 which, like her son, she had turned for consolation. 
 Her mother had seen to it that Rachel received a su- 
 perior education; for she had recognized early the fine 
 quality of the girl's mind, as well as her rare beauty. So 
 the girl's imagination was developed, a rare thing in 
 those days, a heritage that she was to hand down to her 
 
The Boy of St. Kitts 123 
 
 son increased an hundred fold. The Boy dwelt lovingly 
 on the ruddy gold of her hair, hair framing a face 
 aflush with animation, her deep-set gray eyes glowing 
 as she touched on things stirring her profoundly. Then 
 had come her loveless marriage with the Dane, a mar- 
 riage forced upon her by her mother, and leaving her 
 forever seared. Her life was blighted, the great love for 
 the man to whom she gave herself with heart and soul, 
 tinged by this tragic spectre of the past. Her greatest 
 happiness lay with her boy, Alex., and for him she 
 spent herself in preparing him for the great destiny, 
 she, with her mother's insight, knew was his. Truly she 
 had lived v only for him and his future. 
 
 At four, his parents had sent him to a small school 
 in the neighborhood, kept by a Jewess. Some weeks 
 later, he had proposed to recite for them. What was 
 their astonishment when they realized that it was the 
 Decalogue in Hebrew that he was reciting so glibly to 
 them. Fearing a too swift development of the lad, too 
 much activity for the lad's brain, they wisely stopped his 
 schooling for a time, turning him loose out of doors 
 to work off his restless energies in play. So the child 
 from babyhood turned to nature and communed with 
 her, knew her in all her moods and soaked his soul 
 in the beauty all about him. The luxuriant beauty of 
 the tropics steeped the atmosphere with its heavy pun- 
 gency, its sentiency the pulsing undercurrent of life 
 about him creeping into his blood, sensitizing him, call- 
 ing up the poet and the artist lying deep in him. Yet 
 this sensitiveness to beauty tempered by the strain of 
 northern blood flowing in his veins like an east wind 
 fresh from the heathered moorland of the Scottish hills, 
 this heritage from his father giving him balance, that 
 £001, intellectual quality of mind that gave him so funda- 
 
124 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 mental, so stupendous a grasp in after years, of that 
 giant task of laying the sound basis of a nation's cur- 
 rency. A paradox in the Boy's nature, it would seem, 
 yet really but two needed qualities, the one the com- 
 plement of the other, making him truly great. With the 
 first, he felt and visioned. With the second, he moulded 
 and crystallized those visions that were to encompass 
 the building and the fashioning of a nation newly born. 
 To this country of his adoption, the Boy was to give 
 himself without reserve, to pour out all the passionate 
 love of a great soul, a love expressing itself in tireless 
 service, a love that could find no rest until his work 
 was finished; his short life full to the brim and over- 
 flowing in its giving, to be struck down by an ungen- 
 erous foe. 
 
 In his dying, this Boy of St. Kitt's was to reveal the 
 epitome of his whole character, — his generous nature, 
 his fine pride, his fearless going out of that same quality 
 as the questing spirit of his boyhood, the slipping out 
 into the unknown sea beyond the sounding reef at the 
 harbor's mouth, and the blue line of hills of St. Thomas. 
 In all things, he was a seeker, and so he was to sweep 
 out as he had swept in, like a great tide losing itself in 
 the vast infinitude of sea that knows no horizon, only 
 to find itself anew, a seeker still, conscious of greater 
 strength, vaster power. 
 
 Nearer and nearer swept the storm, and faster and 
 faster the black horse sped along the white road, the Boy 
 bent forward now, urging the lathered horse forward, 
 his voice, quiet, tense, impelling. The gleam of battle 
 glowed in the Boy's gray eyes as he pitted his will un- 
 flagingly against the storm, this Boy whose nature was 
 all sunshine, whose life was ever tinged by the shadow of 
 the storm cloud. As he swept on toward the Mitchells, 
 
The Boy of St. Kitts 125 
 
 having shouted his warning to the Lyttons as he passed, 
 bitter thoughts crowded in, pain gnawing at his heart, 
 because those who might have helped him to the fulfill- 
 ment of his heart's desire, still refused the needful 
 pecuniary aid. It was galling enough to his pride to 
 have asked. To be refused, cut him to the quick. So 
 four years before he had left his uncle's house, de- 
 termined to no longer be dependent upon any one. So 
 he had hung on to his place at the counting house, 
 longing for the day when he could break away to live his 
 life in a more congenial environment. Would he see 
 the fulfillment of his dream of going to King's, this col- 
 lege which was to be his gateway to the world? Hugh 
 Knox had counseled patience, and he had striven for his 
 friend's sake to curb his spirit; but his spirit would 
 tug at the leash, and the breaking point was near, — 
 nearer than he knew ; for beyond the shadow of the storm 
 the sun was shining, though in the darkness he knew it 
 not. This storm pursuing him along the dark lonely 
 road, and bringing destruction in its path, was to give 
 him his great opportunity. To the Boy, riding through 
 the night, the road seemed to stretch endlessly, with no 
 shadow of a turning. Yet, at that very moment he was 
 at the turning. Life in all its fullness lay waiting for 
 him just beyond the turn of the road, a road that he 
 would follow to the end, wherever it might lead. Destiny 
 was calling to him from out the heart of the storm wind, 
 and he would go at her bidding with no thought of 
 turning back. 
 
 As he rode, the Boy knew not why, a sudden exaltation 
 gripped him, as if at last he were, in truth, riding the 
 storm wind, master of his fate, captain of his soul. Such 
 was to be the Boy's mood as he sat down to write the 
 story of that historic hurricane that swept Nevis in 1772, 
 
126 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 a hurricane that set the seal of the Boy's future career; 
 for through it he was to win his uncle Tom Mitchell's 
 consent and aid to pursue his college course at King's. 
 
 "Keep your temper, lad, and keep your head high re- 
 garding your birth," Hugh Knox had said to him once 
 when the Boy had come to him flushed and angry, stung 
 by some schoolboy's taunt. "Your mother's and father's 
 love was of rare purity and nobility. Keep your own 
 counsel, but if the secret of your heart is forced, let no 
 man besmirch their names." 
 
 "Gad, sir!" the Boy had flashed back. "If any one 
 dare. . 
 
 Hugh Knox had gripped the Boy's shoulder, the Boy 
 could feel the gentleness of his touch now, as he remem- 
 bered also his words. 
 
 "I know the quality of your loyalty, lad. You loved- 
 your mother as few do. Strive always for the highest." 
 
 So the Boy was to go forth with his head held high, 
 riding upon the storm wind, a conqueror to the end. 
 Storms would sweep over him, but would not shatter. 
 His road would ever lead him into the heart of the whirl- 
 wind, but his fine courage would not fail, his indomitable 
 will forever rising to do battle and to conquer. Though 
 his life was destined to be spent beyond the blue line of 
 hills, and the sounding reef at the harbor's mouth, yet 
 his heart would ever turn back to the windswept hillside 
 where his beloved mother lay sleeping. It was there he 
 paused in reverence like the crusader of old, before he set 
 forth upon his journey along that bright, mist-hung road- 
 way of his dreams, a roadway whose goal was the land 
 across the seas. It was there his thoughts swept back 
 in his moments of stress and of exaltation, — this Boy of 
 St. Kitts riding upon the storm wind that freedom might 
 rest safe upon the wings of the dawning day. 
 
NELSON— THE BOY OF TRAFALGAR 
 
 HE stood, a slim figure of a boy, upon the quarter deck 
 of the Racehorse, looking off across the endless 
 stretches of snow fields gleaming cold and grim in the 
 violet dusk, snow fields broken here and there by the sheer 
 sides of a vast berg, or by hummocks formed by the ice 
 packs of many an arctic spring when the ice had broken 
 up and started on its journey toward the open sea. As 
 far as the eye could reach, on every side, stretched this 
 wilderness of ice and snow, a desolate waste, with no 
 sign of life save the stout outlines of the Carcass, caught 
 like her sister bombship, the Racehorse, hemmed in by 
 that frozen polar sea. Now and again, the Boy swept 
 those lifeless wastes with his glass, his figure taut, his 
 eyes luminous, brimming with expectancy from beneath 
 the fur cap encasing his head. So he kept watch, this 
 young coxswain, Horatio Nelson, R.N., in the late winter 
 dusk, as he had kept watch countless nights during that 
 long winter since the expedition had gotten caught in the 
 ice off the Greenland coast, months of monotony, of 
 hardships, of deepening anxiety as the spring and the 
 breaking up of the ice drew nearer. 
 
 To-night, as he paced the quarter deck, it was the 
 monotony that palled upon this ardent young seaman ; for 
 the Boy was essentially a boy of action, his eager, pas- 
 sionate nature reaching out toward the vigorous prosecu- 
 tion of some deed. Passivity, inactivity, were not easy 
 for him; yet he could wait endlessly, if by waiting he 
 could the more surely accomplish. He seemed to sense 
 
 127 
 
128 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 the psychological moment for action, and therein lay the 
 secret of his greatness. The discipline of these months 
 of inactivity had not been lost upon him. He had learned 
 to curb his impatience, to hearten the men, to help make 
 their lot easier; for his sympathy had gone out early in 
 his seaman's career to the men before the mast, a sym- 
 pathy born of his own loneliness when he had first shipped 
 under his uncle, Captain Suckling, on the Raisonnable, 
 and which throughout his career he was never to lose. 
 He, only a boy of fifteen, had learned, though he knew it 
 not, the secret of leadership, that understanding of human 
 nature coupled with knowledge, with intensity of purpose, 
 with that mental daring that pushes on without hesitation 
 toward the goal his vision has revealed to him. This 
 winter had inured the Boy to hardship, his weakness of 
 body dominated ever by his indomitable will, his resolute 
 heart and nobleness of mind that was to distinguish his 
 whole career of labor and glory. Though slight, the Boy 
 was of the spareness of the athlete, his fresh complexion 
 bronzed by exposure, his eyes steady and level, seaman's 
 eyes, luminous from looking across the limitless space, 
 from penetrating into the unknown, into the unseen mys- 
 teries beyond the horizon line where sea and sky meet. 
 
 All his life, the Boy had dreamed of the sea, had loved 
 it ever since his first glimpse of the pale line of the North 
 Sea from the wooded hillside of Burnham Thorpe, his 
 Norfolkshire home, — the deep setting of his whole life, 
 the spot to which all his days he turned with love and 
 longing. Many a day, he would slip away to the crest of 
 the hill, in springtime a mist of tender green, in autumn 
 brown and bare, yet vibrant, and flinging himself upon 
 his back, he would dream of life out there upon the mist- 
 shrouded North Sea, whose waters, in the days to come, 
 he was to patrol with English ships, safeguarding 
 
The Boy of Trafalgar 129 
 
 European civilization, saving it, really, from the greed of 
 one man's overfed ambition. So from babyhood, the Boy 
 had let his imagination linger about the pale line of dis- 
 tant sea, his longing for the sea coming to him as an in- 
 heritance from his mother, her family, the Sucklings, hav- 
 ing been seafaring men for generations. A delicate child 
 from birth, his mother had never encouraged the lad's 
 longing for a sailor's life. Yet, perhaps of all the eight 
 children, Horace, as they called him at home, sat most 
 enthralled listening to his sailor uncle spinning sea yarns, 
 this bluff sailor man who came occasionally to visit at 
 Burnham Thorpe, being a hero in the Boy's eyes. 
 
 He was but a little chap of nine, when his mother died, 
 her death a lasting grief to the gentle, white-haired vicar 
 and his little brood whom with rare wisdom he mothered, 
 and prepared to meet the world, as well as his straitened 
 circumstances would allow. Horace's uncle Maurice, on 
 that tragic day when the Boy's mother had been laid to 
 rest in the little churchyard, had promised to care for 
 one of the boys, a promise that three years later he was 
 to make good, though at first none too graciously ; for he 
 was to judge the Boy by his delicate appearance, as a 
 weakling. He was to learn later the lad's robustness of 
 soul. The longing for the sea had grown upon the lad 
 during those three years following his mother's death, and 
 with it came too a desire to provide for himself. His 
 father was growing old, and his means were limited the 
 Boy knew, and while his father was at Bath recovering 
 his health, Horace read of his Uncle Maurice's appoint- 
 ment to the command of the Rcdsonnable, a ship of sixty- 
 four guns. With all the ardor of his boyish nature, he 
 begged leave of his father on his return, to ship with his 
 uncle, and so begin his seaman's career, the life for which 
 he longed. His father, knowing the boy's character, did 
 
130 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 not oppose him, and putting his hand on the lad's shoul- 
 der, he said : 
 
 "Horace, my lad, I know your heart, and I know that 
 in whatever station you are placed, you will not rest until 
 you have climbed to the top of the tree. Let nothing 
 less satisfy." 
 
 So the Boy's father with rare insight, touched the noble- 
 ness lying deep in his son's nature, awaking it, the 
 nobleness in the father calling to that of this Boy of 
 destiny, in whose keeping lay the future of an empire, 
 the very life of European civilization. 
 
 At last on a cold spring morning the vicar's servant 
 came to the North Walsham School to summon the boy to 
 join his ship. It was dark and cheerless, the ground sod- 
 den, the wind sweeping in from the North Sea, bleak 
 and biting, as they set forth on the journey up to London. 
 Yet, despite the heartsickness the Boy felt at leaving 
 his brother William behind, there was no thought in 
 Horace's mind of turning back. He had put his hand to 
 the plough. His face was set toward the east, and would 
 be until the furrow was finished, the field ready for the 
 sowing and the harvest, that harvest which he was to 
 vision and make possible for England to realize, England 
 for whom his whole life was to be spent in service, in 
 maintaining that freedom of the seas first won by 
 Francis Drake against the pirates of the Spanish Main, 
 an ideal and a tradition that was for all time to permeate 
 England's navy. It was this stoutness of heart, this half- 
 formed vision in the lad, that enabled him to crush down 
 those first days of loneliness on the Raisonnable, his 
 uncle's contemptuous words that had bitten so deep into 
 the Boy's sensitive soul. When Captain Suckling had re- 
 membered at last that his nephew was aboard, he had sent 
 for him, his contempt for the weakling boy ill-concealed. 
 
The Boy of Trafalgar 131 
 
 "What has poor Horatio done, who is so weak," he 
 exclaimed peevishly, noting the lad's frailness, "that he 
 above all the rest should be sent to rough it out on the 
 sea ? The first time we go into action, a cannon ball may 
 knock off his head and provide for him at once." 
 
 He little knew what fate had in store for this lad so 
 slim of body, so mighty of soul; nor did he guess how 
 England's future lay with this lad's fertile brain,' his in- 
 tuitive sense that would grasp the psychological moment 
 when to strike, when to hold back, his tenacity and his 
 fidelity to the high trust imposed in him. 
 
 As the Boy paced the quarter deck under the Arctic 
 sky, old memories came flooding in, bringing with them 
 an ache at the heart, a yearning for home and all that 
 that vine-clad parsonage at Burnham Thorpe signified; 
 for the quiet peace of rural England, love of the soil, that 
 backbone of England's strength, and the homely beauty of 
 tradition were the deep roots of the Boy's life, giving to 
 his eager, passionate nature balance, that clear-sighted 
 vision which his creative restlessness resolved ever into 
 action. No idle dreamer, this lad of the Norfolk by- 
 ways, but a doer, a visioner that he might accomplish 
 great deeds for England whom he loved with all the depth 
 of his passionate nature. On that still air of the Arctic 
 night, there was wafted to him the fragrance of the Nor- 
 folk countryside in April, the winding roads and deep- 
 set lanes bordered by high tangled hedges white with 
 may, the steep banks carpeted with wild rose, clematis 
 and elder flower, the fields splashed with scarlet poppies 
 and blue cornflowers, or ashimmer with the shrill green 
 of century-old pastures, reborn in the soft April air. 
 "Oh! to be in England now that April's here," was the 
 cry of his heart as he visualized the old parsonage with 
 its steep-eaved. red-tiled roof, its gray dormer windows 
 
132 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 and low., wide doorway, its smoke-stained chimneypiece 
 about which they had gathered on winter nights, the 
 blazing logs the background of many an Arabian Night 
 adventure. There in the dooryard, stood the sturdy oak 
 where the mavis' liquid notes had stirred the poet in the 
 boy, and where the nightingale had made vibrant the 
 stillness of a night in May. There was the stream wind- 
 ing down through the meadow where the cows were pas- 
 tured, and the pump where he and his brothers had played 
 at being navigators, the duck pond hard by, to them the 
 great South Seas of adventure, the imagination of the 
 Boy opening up new avenues for their adventurous 
 spirits to follow. Then there was the walled kitchen 
 garden, its box walks full of delicious mystery, and 
 peopled by the Boy with fairy folk born of his imagina- 
 tion. The espalier of fruit along the southern wall, was 
 an Eden from which he seldom escaped untainted by the 
 race-old failure of Eve. Just beyond the box hedge lay 
 his land of flowers, as he called it, the flower garden, a 
 riot of color in June, and redolent of roses drenched with 
 dew, this quiet beauty sinking deep into the Boy's soul, 
 a beauty permeated by the wholesome and the true, 
 making for "sweetness and light" in a life whose bed- 
 rock was the tradition of a noble heritage. Simplicity 
 of living was the keynote of the Boy's whole life, a life 
 that because of its roots struck deep into the soil, could 
 reach out in all its rugged vigor to every corner of the 
 empire, leaving its indelible imprint upon the pages of 
 the world's history. 
 
 Horace's mind was inordinately acute as the hours of 
 his watch dragged on, the minutest memory driving in 
 upon him, and he recalled how as a tiny lad he had strayed 
 away searching for bird nests, his wandering feet stayed 
 by a brook too swift and deep for him to cross. Yet, 
 
The Boy of Trafalgar 133 
 
 even in that wee scrap of five, tenacity of purpose was 
 revealed a dominant trait; for it never had occurred to 
 the child to return home defeated. His family had 
 found him after long searching, striving to overcome 
 the obstacle by which he was faced. 
 
 "I wonder, child," his grandmother had said to him, 
 "that hunger and fear did not drive you home." 
 
 "Fear, Grandmamma?" the lad had answered won- 
 deringly, "I never saw fear. What is it ?" 
 
 Therein lay the epitome of the Boy's whole character. 
 Fear he knew not, his daring and courage of that rare 
 quality that not only accomplishes what it sets out to do, 
 but that sees and knows, spending itself tirelessly, yet 
 conserving, that when the moment to act comes, there will 
 be no wasting of strength, no betrayal of a blind eager- 
 ness, more futile in its effects than lack of initiative. 
 Again he recalled another bird-nesting adventure, this 
 time the nest of a rare bird being the goal of his quest, 
 his quest rudely interrupted by his nurse Blackett, who, 
 with a nurse's limited vision, knew only that it was 
 Master Horace's bed hour, and that therefore, despite all 
 protest, to bed he must go. The lad submitted none too 
 willingly, yet underneath the outward compliance the 
 Boy's resolve hardened. He but bided his time, and when 
 the house lay quiet beneath the May moon, he crept out 
 into the night, back to the woods from which his nurse 
 had carried him, there to be found when morning came, 
 asleep beneath the tree in whose branches the bird had 
 made its nest. Only a little lad of seven, yet with a 
 courage and tenacity of purpose that gave him no rest 
 until the quest was ended, the thing which he had visioned 
 lay within his grasp. 
 
 Faithfulness was likewise characteristic of the lad, a 
 faithfulness that was the flower of his tenacity of pur- 
 
134 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 pose, of his keen sense of duty, of his instinctive response 
 to any trust imposed upon him, a faithfulness that was 
 coupled with a profound sense of honor. Once, after the 
 winter holidays, he and his brother William having set 
 out on horseback for school, returned because of the 
 snow. Their father, with rare wisdom, bade them try 
 again, and that if they found the snow too deep, they 
 might come home. They set out for a second time, but 
 William, cold and hating the curtailment of his freedom 
 return to school would entail, suggested that they turn 
 back. Horace, looking at his brother, answered swiftly: 
 "We are on our honor. We may not return." 
 So the boys went on to North Waltham as the vicar 
 had believed they would; for with almost a woman's 
 intuition, this gentle, old man knew the hearts and the 
 characters of these boys, to whom he ever gave a mother's 
 loving care, especially to Horace, whom he dimly sur- 
 mised as set apart for some great destiny. Thus the 
 Boy's thoughts strayed to the Royal Grammar School at 
 Norwich, standing within the very shadow of the cathe- 
 dral. Here he had spent many happy days, wandering 
 about the cathedral precincts; best of all, he had loved 
 fishing beside the old water gate, Pull's Ferry, so it was 
 called, that self-same spot whither in old monastic days 
 the monks had come to do their fast days' fishing. The 
 Boy laughed now, remembering the day he had scaled the 
 schoolmaster's garden wall, and had stolen pears from 
 the espalier, not because he had wanted them, or had 
 eaten any of his stolen fruit. He had done it merely be- 
 cause no other boy had dared. The fruit he had tossed in 
 disgust to the boys who had watched him from a distance. 
 So had his power of leadership been revealed in the 
 schoolboy, seeds that even now were blossoming. There 
 had been his fight with the walrus two months before, 
 
The Boy of Trafalgar 135 
 
 when he and his men had sought a passage to the open 
 sea, his coolness and daring not only winning the men 
 under his command, but saving the expedition from disas- 
 ter. Only three nights before, he had faced alone a huge 
 polar bear with only the butt of his musket with which 
 to defend himself, a sudden rift in the ice the only thing 
 that had saved the lad for England's future service. 
 
 To-night, as he paused to scan the horizon with his 
 glass, a great wave of despair swept him, he knew not 
 why. Longing for the quiet beauty of Burnham Thorpe 
 gripped him. The eternal cold, the forced inactivity, the 
 monotony of this land of eternal snow had crept into his 
 bones, sharpening the nostalgia. Would the ice hold 
 them in its grip until hunger and lack of fuel beat down 
 their unconquerable spirits even unto death? Was this 
 to be the end of all his hopes and dreams, the blotting out 
 of his high vision for the future ? To go out, with not a 
 fighting chance for life; to sleep forever among those 
 desolate wastes of snow and ice; never to breathe again 
 the hawthorn-laden air of England, nor to behold the 
 magic beauty of an English spring ; to be cut down at the 
 beginning of his career without a chance to prove him- 
 self and to win glory for England; these were the 
 thoughts crowding in upon the Boy pacing his watch upon 
 the quarter deck of the Racehorse. Yet, as he watched 
 an aurora brightening in the north, its delicate needles 
 stretching out to the highest heavens, so a vision came to 
 the Boy, a vision of his king and country calling him to 
 some great service on the seas, he on his flagship Victory 
 leading that proud line of ships to do battle somewhere 
 for England. Though the vision, like the aurora, faded, 
 yet the glow of that white light had burned itself upon 
 his heart forever. His soul was filled with a sudden high 
 resolve that he was never to let go. 
 
136 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 "I will be a hero," he vowed to the night stars, "and, 
 confiding in Providence, I will brave every danger." 
 
 Thus the Boy's foot was set upon the path along which 
 Destiny was calling him, a pathway at whose end roses 
 grew, perhaps, but intermixed with many a thorn. Yet 
 the thorns he would tread under foot, his duty the mis- 
 tress whom he served with rare fidelity, his whole life 
 that of service to the country he loved with passionate 
 devotion. 
 
 As he stood there watching and dreaming of the vision 
 he had seen, his heart on fire, the Boy caught the boom- 
 ing of the breaking ice. Release even as the spring, was 
 at hand, and, he knew not "why, assurance came to him 
 that the days of waiting and anxiety were at an end, 
 the weary days spent upon those frozen Greenland shores 
 were nearly over. Beyond lay the open sea to which with 
 the breaking up of the ice they would drift, and so to 
 England lying over there to the east, England^ with her 
 brown plough lands and her shrill green pastures, her 
 woodlands and her quiet gardens steeped in flowers. 
 
 With a swift movement he called a petty officer to him. 
 His watch was over. For him the dawning of a new 
 day was breaking, even as the stars paled and the aurora 
 faded. 
 
 "My compliments to Commander Phipps, officer, and 
 tell him that in the west the ice is breaking. To-day, to 
 the eastward, we will find open sea !" 
 
 "Aye, aye, sir!" 
 
BURNS— THE BOY OF THE SCOTTISH MOORS 
 
 THE soft breath of the west wind swept across the 
 bleak heather-brown moorland, voicing the advent 
 of spring as it sped toward the lowlands, awakening in 
 its passing the dreaming flowers, the wooded valleys, 
 and the very stone-strewn field where a young sower was 
 already scattering seed as he trudged up and down the 
 freshly harrowed earth whistling as he went. Strong, of 
 robust build, the Boy with easy stride swung to and fro 
 across the field, pausing now and again to sniff the sea 
 air, and to glance up at the gray sky through which 
 patches of blue sky peeped shyly out. From out the 
 bracken on the far edge of the field a lark rose singing 
 as if it too had caught the note of spring in the "wet- 
 lipped" sea wind, even as the Boy standing entranced, his 
 dark eyes glowing, the seed in his outstretched hand mo- 
 mentarily forgotten. With a happy smile the Boy 
 watched the bird mount and mount into the March sky 
 and disappear into a blue patch rimmed with clouds over- 
 hanging the moorland beyond the straggling stone fence, 
 this trackless waste, his epitome of the freedom for which 
 his soul yearned. The stone-set field in which he stood 
 marked the drudgery of his daily life, the long hours from 
 sunrise to sunset of ceaseless toil that yielded but little 
 recompense. Yet it was something to be in the open all 
 day, to live with nature and to know her every mood, to 
 know by the tang of the sea wind brushing his face that 
 the snows of yesterday were vanished for another year, 
 and that the "green fire" of spring was even now creep- 
 
 137 
 
138 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 ing softly across the hills and valleys. He had seen the 
 lark rise from out the bracken, and in the rowan tree by 
 the wall he now caught the liquid notes of another har- 
 binger, the mavis. The Boy drew in his breath sharply, 
 the beauty of the song catching at his throat, while in his 
 dark eyes tears gleamed. He felt a peculiar kinship with 
 all living things, this boy of the fields and moors, even for 
 the shy little field mouse whose home he sometimes in- 
 advertently disturbed while ploughing, an event that 
 brought out swiftly the deep tenderness in him, the gentle- 
 ness inherent in the truly strong. The bird ceased its 
 singing, and the Boy mechanically went back to his sow- 
 ing; but his thoughts were far away among the pungent, 
 heather-strewn cliffs overlooking a foam-flecked sea. It 
 was one of the seeming contradictions in him, that despite 
 his merry nature and love of companionship, the Boy 
 craved solitude, the solitude of the woods and hills, the 
 trackless moorland edging the sea. So sensitive was the 
 Boy to the beauty, which in his outdoor life surrounded 
 him, pressing in upon his soul until it cried out in ex- 
 quisite pain, that for the sweet joy of it, he must needs 
 creep away until his soul overflowed into lyric song. It 
 was the deep-voiced sea, with its pent note of passion 
 that stirred in the Boy's soul, its organ-like undercurrent 
 of rich harmonies the fabric into which his simple melo- 
 dies were to be woven and interwoven, impregnating 
 them with the passion-stirred music of that storm-tossed 
 northern sea. Out of the silence of those sea-fringed 
 cliffs, the wind spoke its mystic language to the Boy; 
 and he, translating, gave expression to this world of 
 beauty in which he lived. So were the common tasks of 
 every day lifted up sunshot and sparkling as the wave's 
 spume caught by the sun. 
 Yet the Boy was not all dreamer; the martial spirit of 
 
The Boy of the Scottish Moors 139 
 
 the highlands tempering his spirit likewise, and as a tiny 
 lad the sound of the pipes and the sight of the kilted high- 
 land regiments stirred his blood, setting his thoughts to- 
 ward a soldier's career. Many a time the countryside of 
 Ayr was regaled with the sturdy figure of the tiny boy 
 of six strutting down the street after the recruiting drum 
 and bagpipe. This early warlike ardor was awakened 
 in the Boy, perhaps, through his love of reading, an in- 
 heritance from his father, this love of reading encouraged 
 and nurtured in him by his beloved schoolmaster, one 
 John Murdock, who generously shared his few books with 
 this ruddy-faced boy of the open. "The Life of Han- 
 nibal" awakening in the Boy all the love for heroic tra- 
 dition inherent in the Scot, was followed by the story of 
 Wallace borrowed from the blacksmith, a tale that fired 
 the Boy's imagination to white heat, the Boy walking 
 some six miles one summer's day to pay his respects to 
 Leglen Wood, peopled with many a legend and tradition 
 that, 
 
 "Nourished Imagination in her growth, 
 And gave the mind that apprehensive power, 
 By which she is made quick to recognize 
 The moral properties and scope of things.'' 
 
 Thus Leglen Wood poured "a tide of Scottish eternal 
 prejudice into his veins." The Boy's imagination had 
 been first enkindled by his mother, who from his cradle 
 had sung him to sleep with tradition-worn ballads, and 
 the songs of Jacobite Scotland. A close bond united this 
 mother and her eldest son, who resembled her so closely 
 in feature ; and she, quick to recognize in the glow of his 
 dark eyes the budding imagination in the Boy, nourished 
 it with her rich store of ballads and traditionary tales. 
 To a relative of his mother's, one Betty Davidson, who 
 spent much of her time with the Burns family, the Boy 
 
140 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 owed a great deal also; for it was she who further aug- 
 mented his mother's fund of tales, filling his mind with 
 stories of ghosts and fairies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead- 
 lights, giants, enchanted towers and dragons, his imagina- 
 tion thus enkindled, sensitizing him, enabling him to draw 
 closer to nature and to commune with her, and to inter- 
 pret her every mood, her tenderest emotion and her wild- 
 est outburst. It sharpened too, his keen observation, until 
 he knew the habits and the whereabouts of field mouse 
 and mavis, of moor hen and scurrying rabbit ; as for the 
 flowers, he watched for them before the snow had melted 
 from the hills, and hunted for them long after the white 
 heather had withered and turned brown. So close he 
 dwelt to nature's very heart, that to the Boy she seemed 
 a living personality, speaking to him in manifold ways, 
 the wind, the flowers, the birds, each with its mystic 
 message, and vibrant of the music of the wide moorland 
 wastes. 
 
 A tender smile swept the Boy's face, remembering his 
 mother and the days when as a little fellow he and his 
 brothers had sat at her knee by the wide-mouthed chim- 
 ney piece in the fire-light glow, the wind and sleet beating 
 upon the walls of the clay cottage standing by the high- 
 way to Ayr. He could hear still her rich alto voice sing- 
 ing those soul-stirring Songs of the North. Then in the 
 flickering firelight she would tell them tales of Flora 
 Macdonald and Prince Charlie, of Wallace and Bruce, 
 tales that fired the Boy's imagination and patriotism, that 
 ardent love of country so deep-grained in the Scot. The 
 Boy possessed of a retentive memory, "a stubborn sturdy 
 something in his disposition," never forgot those dark 
 winter evenings by the fireside, his imagination thus 
 steeped in legend, and in the romance-soaked history of 
 his native land, gave back of its sombre richness a 
 
The Boy of the Scottish Moors 141 
 
 thousand fold, his lyrical verse to be at once of that sim- 
 plicity and richness, that barrenness and color of his own 
 native Ayrshire. There was one story that the Boy's 
 mother always told with special emphasis, knowing her 
 son's quickness to despair, the story of Bruce watching 
 the spider spin his web at the mouth of the cave in Haw- 
 thornden Woods hard by Roslyn Chapel ; for the mother, 
 with the sublime understanding of a mother's love, saw 
 in the tiny lad seeds of the weak will and lack of perse- 
 verance that in later years was to be his undoing. 
 
 "He never gave up, Bobbie, lad," she had said to him 
 one day when the Boy, weary of the plough, strained at 
 the leash. "Its that makes a man great." 
 
 "He was a soldier fighting for his country. He did not 
 hoe and plough," the Boy had answered sullenly. 
 
 "He had a stonier field to hoe than you will ever know, 
 lad. Yet he had faith in himself and in God. His vision 
 for Scotland he never let grow dim." 
 
 Nor were all the long winter evenings given over to 
 things of the imagination; for twice a week the Boy's 
 father would devote to him and his brothers, teaching 
 them arithmetic and geography, geography rather than 
 arithmetic being the thing that held the Boy's attention. 
 These lessons began when Bobbie had just turned seven, 
 the same year the family had moved to Mont Oliphant, a 
 farm that proved a more "hungry soil" than the one on 
 the Ayr highway. Even at that early age, the Boy had 
 traced with eager fingers the maps of an unknown world, 
 a world so rich in possibilities, brilliant as autumn leaves 
 blown by the wind. In the Boy's nature there stirred 
 even then a vague desire for the spaceless moorland and 
 the sea, for a life less cramped, less monotonous, a life 
 that was not hemmed in by a furrowed field rough with 
 stones and poor in recompense, but a life rich in intellec- 
 
142 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 tual intercourse and environment, and therefore free. 
 T*he narrow confines of his life irked the boy, his imag- 
 ination reaching out to grasp the purple, sunshot mists 
 overhanging the moorland stretches beyond the crum- 
 bling stone fence. He felt the call of nature all about 
 him as he stood there in the half-sown field, this call 
 making him restless not only to express the beauty 
 stirring his very soul, but restless in his longing for that 
 companionship of soul that makes a life sparkle with 
 sunshine. 
 
 Into the drab monotony of his existence, there came 
 one whose coming marked a turning point in his career, 
 his teacher, John Murdock, who with rare insight gleaned 
 the poet in the lad, noting his insatiate love of beauty, 
 developing it, satisfying the hunger in the Boy's soul by 
 lending him books from his limited though choice store, a 
 treasure trove for the Boy who drank thirstily from this 
 Pierian spring, his taste guided thus to discriminate and 
 to love the best in literature as well as in nature. It was 
 Murdock who spent hours instructing the Boy, hours 
 often demanding infinite patience, for Bobbie, as he was 
 generally called, like all high-spirited boys, was full of 
 pranks, loving fun far better than his lessons. Murdock 
 who, perhaps more than any one, except the Boy's 
 mother, did most in moulding this embryo poet, gave the 
 boy the richness of his friendship, not only introducing 
 him to the Spectator, Shakespeare and Pope's "Homer," 
 but also by spending many a winter's evening with the 
 lad reading to him, dipping into the golden pages with 
 the love of one who dwells much on the heights. The 
 Boy laughed now remembering the first time Murdock 
 had read to him "Titus Andronicus," that fifth scene of 
 Act II, where Lavinia enters with hands cut off and 
 tongueless, the reading affecting the quivering imagina- 
 
The Boy of the Scottish Moors 143 
 
 tion of the Boy of nine so keenly, that he declared that if 
 Murdock left the play to finish that he would hum it. 
 So Murdock, laughing, had left instead "The School for 
 Love," little guessing the hidden irony of his choice. 
 
 In his thirteenth year, the Boy had gone to the parish 
 school of Dalrymple where he augmented his meager 
 education, the desire to learn a touching tribute to Mur- 
 dock's inexhaustible patience, and untiring encourage- 
 ment. It was there he met James Candlish, afterwards 
 destined to be distinguished both as a debater and a 
 medical lecturer, a friendship that was further cemented 
 by a sojourn the following summer at Ayr Grammar 
 School where Bobbie had spent some weeks by Mur- 
 dock's, the headmaster's invitation, weeks proving fruit- 
 ful in the Boy's after life ; the time there broken into by 
 the call of harvest, a harvesting memorable because of 
 his first meeting with the lovely highland lass, Nellie 
 Kirkpatrick, the blacksmith's daughter, who shared with 
 him, as was the custom in that part of the country, the 
 work of harvest. 
 
 The Boy's dark eyes glowed as he recalled their first 
 meeting in that very field, he a lad of fifteen, and she, 
 lovely and bewitching in her fresh, unconscious beauty, 
 a lass barely turned fourteen. They had met, and they 
 had loved as the sun seeking the heart of wayside flowers 
 in May. As they had gathered in the harvest, their 
 hearts sang to the springtide of awakening love. To the 
 Boy, it was the first step toward the wide moorland of his 
 dreams, deepening in him his understanding and love of 
 nature; for through nature he would express the deep 
 thoughts of his soul. Nature and its beauty had turned 
 his heart to melody. Love was to give the touch of im- 
 mortal fire making him not only Scotland's greatest poet, 
 but the most nobly impassioned singer of love songs 
 
144 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 since the days of Shakespeare. Pure lyric verse he 
 poured out in that first flush of his love, and through all 
 his poems there is ever passion set in nature's imagery. 
 
 "I see her in the dewy flowers, 
 
 I see her sweet and fair: 
 I hear her in the tunefu' birds, 
 
 I hear her charm the air :" 
 
 Throughout his life he was to cling to> his plowman's 
 creed, which the darkening clouds of his later life could 
 never dim. 
 
 "Give me ae spark o' Nature's fire, 
 That's a' the learning I desire; 
 Then tho' I drudge thro' dub and mire 
 At pleugh or cart, 
 My Muse though hamely in attire, 
 May touch the heart." 
 
 The meager harvest had soon been garnered. So the 
 Boy's love for the fair blacksmith's daughter had passed 
 as swiftly as the golden glory of an autumn day. Yet 
 the harvest had been of a richness as measureless as the 
 grain gathered from the "hungry soil" on which he 
 stood had been scanty and of little worth. 
 
 As he reached the bottom of the field, the Boy paused 
 by the rowan tree, looking off across the moorland, his 
 dreamy eyes agleam, as if they would pierce the mist- 
 dimmed horizon shrouding the distant sea. Freedom 
 and companionship lay yonder, and he craved its rich- 
 ness even as the "hungry soil" craved nourishment. 
 Nature first, and then Nellie Kirkpatrick, the fair high- 
 land lassie, had shown him a way of escape. The endless 
 avenues of his heritage, his imagination, the gods own 
 gift, had set his soul free. Yet he yearned for the great 
 highways of a world still beyond his ken, a world savoring 
 of intellectual companionship, where the plowshare was 
 
The Boy of the Scottish Moors 145 
 
 unknown, and the sower of seed passed unnoticed until 
 the harvest. He caught the joy of the lark's song anew 
 as he watched it mount swiftly. Some day he too would 
 wing his flight in like fashion, singing as he went, and, 
 perhaps, would rise as high. With a smile upon his 
 lips, the Boy with a light step turned whistling back to 
 his sowing. 
 
WORDSWORTH— THE BOY OF WINANDER 
 
 AN April wind swept down the sun-flecked valley of 
 the Derwent, ruffling its placid surface, bringing 
 with it the pungent odor of daffodils, of primroses and 
 drenched woods, — all the fresh beauty of the spring. To 
 the awkward, raw-boned Boy of thirteen standing on this 
 April day of the year 1783 by the close-clipped privet 
 hedge, this breath of the hills was poignant with memory. 
 He was in thoughtful mood as he leaned against the 
 hedge bordering the terrace wall of the old garden; for 
 in this moment the future, — Cambridge, the university, 
 the world — , gleaming before him, he looked instinctively 
 backward across the years touching those things which 
 were woven into his very bone and sinew, those silent 
 forces that had left their impress indelibly upon him, his 
 home, his mother, Nature in all its wild, free beauty. 
 
 A few months before, his father had been laid to rest 
 beside his much-loved mother, and he, "an orphan of a 
 home extinct," and dependent on the bounty of two 
 uncles, now sought in farewell this terraced garden over- 
 looking the Derwent, that "fairest of all rivers," whose 
 voice throughout his life was to "flow along his dreams." 
 
 This garden hedged with privet close-clipped, and with 
 roses ; the shining Derwent at its feet ; the silent moun- 
 tains in the distance, a white road winding over their 
 hilltops, marked three distinct influences in his life. The 
 garden represented to him always the quiet cultivated 
 atmosphere and beauty of his home, a dominant force in 
 his life, this love of home rooted and set in that deep soil 
 
 146 
 
The Boy of Winander 147 
 
 of England from which he sprang. His mother's gentle- 
 ness and strength curbed and controlled the wilder nature 
 in him, moulding this indomitable vigor, will and temper 
 through a wise discipline, into a stern moral energy and 
 patriotism, — the backbone of England's greatness. His 
 sister Dorothy was the other softening influence in his 
 life, a gentleness that feared to brush the dust from off a 
 butterfly's wings; and this garden, echoing the spring 
 song of the birds and the deeper undertone of the mur- 
 muring river, was full of memories of her. Here these 
 two had learned their first lessons from Nature, had 
 watched the birds nest, and the birdlings take the wing ; 
 had followed the course of the seasons from the moment 
 when the "green fire" of spring had crept across the hills 
 until autumn had sounded reveille among the swaying 
 tfee-tops. 
 
 Perhaps the Derwentwater revealed most completely 
 the two sides of his nature, the wild turbulence of the 
 mountain stream, and its calm, translucent quality as it 
 glided by the terraced wall, reflecting in its waters the 
 ruined towers of Cockermouth Castle, that crumbling 
 symbol of a past, powerful, majestic; reflecting likewise 
 the present, the fresh, tender green of an awakening 
 world. It was the past that was to grip and hold the 
 Boy's imagination first, even as it was to be the back- 
 ground upon which he was to paint his vision of the 
 future — a future that was to rise up, bringing with it new 
 thought, new standards, a new and broader outlook. 
 Thus the eyes of the Boy of Winander, in whose clear 
 depths an unquenchable fire smouldered, rested upon the 
 distant hills and the winding road leading across those 
 naked summits. They called to him from the heights as 
 to a quest, the quest of the seeker and the seer, that was 
 to lure him later beyond their craggy peaks only to call 
 
148 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 him back again, — the source truly of all his inspiration, 
 of all his strength. 
 
 Thoughts of his mother came to the Boy as he stood 
 there in the quiet garden, and a smile, tender, wistful, 
 crept into his eyes, softening also the lines about his firm 
 mouth, making his square, rugged face almost beautiful. 
 Memories of that loved mother filled the garden, from 
 the thick clump of roses where the birds without fear 
 built their nests, to the great oak whose spreading shade 
 made it a haven from the noonday heat. Shadowy mem- 
 ories he possessed of her to be such a dominant influence 
 in his life; yet his imagination had woven about that 
 gentle presence a reality, sweet, strong and true. Though 
 but a little lad of five when she had left him, he felt still 
 the power and gentleness of her control, a power that 
 won" him even when he defied all authority, striving to 
 show his daring and independence, as when, defiant, he 
 had struck a whip through a family portrait only to 
 burst into a flood of tears at sight of his mother's face 
 grieved and pained. She had been the first to teach him, 
 and she had been the first to unfold to him the hidden 
 beauty of the common things of life, the beauty lurking 
 in the brown clod as well as in the apple bloom; "the 
 blended holiness of earth and sky" that he was to inter- 
 pret later in words tuned to the murmur of the river, to 
 the deep voice of Nature. 
 
 To his father, revered and loved, the Boy owed much 
 in the further awakening and developing of this life of 
 the imagination, his richest inheritance, the "inward eye" 
 that was to be his "bliss of solitude." It was his father 
 who taught him first to commit to memory the great 
 English poets, — Shakespeare, Milton, and the rest of that 
 long line — , giving him thus an open sesame to the wide 
 fields that lay forever green upon the heights of Eng- 
 
The Boy of Winander 149 
 
 land's Parnassus, where wandering free, untrammeled, 
 he might feed his imagination upon that which was to 
 set the temper of his mind. Though in his love of sport, 
 and all that pertained to the out-of-doors he was much 
 as other boys, yet from babyhood he had been in a certain 
 sense apart, seeking companionship in solitary walks 
 among the hills and valleys that he loved. In this "fair 
 seed-time" of his soul, he was fostered alike by beauty and 
 by fear, this mingling of two elements revealed in the 
 weird wild beauty of those hills playing upon the vivid 
 imagination of the child. Sensitive to impression, the 
 Boy's mood was swayed by the drear sighing of some 
 "blast -torn" tree, by the bleak loneliness of some moor- 
 land waste, or by a "naked pool" lying in some deep hol- 
 low of the hills, where the mist creeping in wove a gray 
 web of shapes fantastic, suggestive of the supernatural, 
 the atmosphere surcharged with brooding and foreboding. 
 Two incidents stood out clear-cut upon his childish mem- 
 ory. The first occurred when as a little child scarce 
 old enough to hold a bridle, he had ridden across these 
 very hills near Cockermouth accompanied by an ancient 
 servant of his father's house. A fog sweeping in upon 
 the moorland waste, the Boy had gotten separated from 
 his guide. Thinking to find the road again, and so his 
 companion, he had dismounted, leading his horse across 
 the rough and stony moor until he reached a bottom, 
 where, in former times, a murderer had been hanged in 
 iron chains. The murderer's name carved in monu- 
 mental letters on the turf, the bleak loneliness of the 
 spot, played so upon the imagination of the child, that he 
 had fled in terror, overcome by the sense of the super- 
 natural, as if the spirit of that ancient murderer hovered 
 still about the place of execution. The second incident 
 that had left so indelible an impress upon his memory, 
 
150 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 had happened only a few months before, a premonition 
 of impending ill overwhelming him as he had stood upon 
 the slopes of High Crag watching for the horses that 
 were to take him and his brothers home from school for 
 the long-looked-for holidays, — a premonition that had 
 been realized two weeks after in his father's death. 
 Standing there now in the old garden, looking out upon 
 those time-scarred hills, this incident swept over him, each 
 detail of the scene on the mountain side where he had 
 stood watching bearing in upon him, — the single sheep, 
 the one blasted tree, the bleak music from the lichened 
 wall, the noise of wood and water and the mist 
 
 "That on the line of each of those two roads 
 Advanced in such indisputable shapes;" 
 
 — , a ghostly warning voicing this loss that was to leave 
 him all bereft, forcing his life into new channels, the old 
 life shed as an outworn garment. 
 
 The four years of his school life at Hawkeshead flooded 
 back with all the fierce longing of a receding tide. He 
 saw as in a dream details that before had passed un- 
 noticed, — the old market town with its irregular outline 
 of narrow corkscrew streets ; the flag pavement covering 
 the brook; the low archways; the picturesque frontages 
 of the houses, the windows diamond-paned, the chimneys 
 quaint and primitive ; the winding approach to the church 
 upon the hill; and below it the ancient Grammar School 
 that for three centuries had been a famed foundation. 
 From the school with its quiet library where he loved to 
 dream among the musty volumes, the Boy's mind wan- 
 dered to the cottage of Anne Tyson shadowed by the tall 
 ash, where he had lodged these four years, a humble dwel- 
 ling yet "with a crowd of things about the precincts 
 all beloved." Here in this Vale of Hawkeshead, whither 
 
The Boy of Winander 151 
 
 he had been transplanted four years before to be "let 
 loose for sports of wider range," the Boy, possessed of 
 all the daring of the hunter, had been the leader among 
 his schoolmates in many a wild escapade. On half-holi- 
 days he had led them to the open heights where wood- 
 cocks scudded from snare to snare; or, hanging by 
 grassy knots from some perilous cliff, he would harry a 
 raven's nest, thus making himself a hero in their eyes. 
 In summer he and his school chums rowed upon Lake 
 Windemere, visiting the various islands about which 
 clung the crumbling beauty of romance as revealed in a 
 half-ruined shrine, or ivy-grown wall. When the pale 
 sunshine of a winter's day gleamed athwart the hills, it 
 was the Boy who led the skaters on the Lake of Esthwaite 
 with shout and merry laughter; yet to the Boy this free, 
 untrammeled intercourse with Nature took on a deep 
 significance, giving him a sense of kinship that in other 
 boys was lacking. Often he slipped away from his com- 
 panions, seeking the deep communion of the solitary 
 places, drinking in silently the wild beauty all about, 
 nothing escaping his keen observation. To him, with 
 
 " strange utterance did the loud dry wind 
 
 Blow through his ear. The sky seemed not a sky 
 Of earth — and with what motion moved the clouds !" 
 
 There was an old Wishing Gate near Windemere that 
 caught the imagination of the Boy. About it he wove 
 many a gossamer thought, until it grew to be the entrance 
 way into his land of dreams, the gate by which he slipped 
 into those rich meadow-lands of fancy; the entrance, 
 perchance, to some magic cave built by fairy hands where 
 romance spun webs of gold-shot fantasie. Once on a 
 summer night he stole down to the Lake, and finding 
 there a boat tied to a willow tree, he unloosed the chain. 
 
152 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 Pushing from the shore, he glided with slow rhythmic 
 strokes across the moonlit waters, fixing his view 
 
 "Upon the summit of a craggy ridge, 
 The horizon's utmost boundary; far above 
 Was nothing but the stars and a gray sky." 
 
 There in the silence of the summer night that craggy 
 ridge stood out a symbol to the Boy, a symbol of the 
 heights to which Destiny was calling him, and to whose 
 callings he now began dimly to make response. The huge 
 black peak rising sharp and sheer behind the jagged ridge 
 seemed to his wrought fancy a Power which he must 
 overcome, the conflict which was to be his before attain- 
 ment, which he later would recognize as an essential 
 element in the poet's life, — a struggle to the very end, a 
 battling against heavy odds. It was his poet's vision that 
 was to keep life sweet for him, that, and the love that 
 was to crown it. 
 
 Thus did the Boy hold unconscious intercourse with 
 beauty, while the earth and the common face of Nature 
 "spoke to him rememberable things." And thus did he 
 build up his soul with "high objects," with the things that 
 endure ; for there were two great periods in the develop- 
 ment of the Boy. The first period was that of uncon- 
 scious receptivity, when life seemed sweet he knew not 
 why. Now as he stood there in the old garden, his eyes 
 piercing the future, — the four more years at Hawkes- 
 head, a changed aspect with no looking forward to holi- 
 days at home ; then Cambridge and the world — , he passed 
 into that second period of his growth, that of conscious 
 intercourse with aspects both sublime and fair to the 
 external world. 
 
 So the Boy crossed the borderland even as he left the 
 garden, his head thrown back, the light of a new-born 
 power flashing in his gray eyes, a solitary figure who had 
 
The Boy of Winander 153 
 
 seen beyond the summit of the distant mountains. The 
 power of the hills was on him, the music of waters was 
 in his ears ; light and darkness were to weave their spells 
 for him, — this Boy of Winander who was to be the dis- 
 coverer of the open face of Nature. 
 
LAMB— THE BLUE-COAT BOY 
 
 FOUR things always stood out beyond all others in 
 the Blue-Coat Boy's after life, — the old Temple with 
 its gardens, its fountain court, its terraced walk and the 
 Temple Church, the library of his father's benefactor, 
 Mr. Salt, to which he had free access ; the old house at 
 Blakesware in Hertfordshire, where as a child he visited 
 his grandmother, the worthy housekeeper of the vener- 
 able family of Plumer ; and the cloisters of Christ's Hos- 
 pital, the Blue-Coat School about which so many of his 
 boyhood days were centred, these cloisters, perchance, 
 being the most potent influence coloring the after years. 
 To these cloisters where as a boy he loved to linger, the 
 Boy was ever coming back, sometimes in reality, more 
 often in thought, finding there the peace his gentle, con- 
 templative spirit yearned, linking him inevitably with the 
 past with which he had such close kinship. Yet the Boy, 
 though born and shadowed by the past, was no idle 
 dreamer who spun romances or wove about himself a 
 world of mere unrealities and evanescent fancies. He 
 clung persistently to the realities of life, seeing them more 
 clearly because of his power of vision, these antithetic 
 qualities in him working together in harmony toward 
 concrete as well as spiritual attainment, this looking back- 
 ward giving him the vision to go forward; for true as 
 the. present was to him, the past was also, a potent force, 
 and upon this firm foundation the Boy was to build his 
 philosophy of life. 
 
 The Boy's earliest recollections were steeped in the 
 atmosphere of the past, the Inner Temple and the quaint 
 
 i54 
 
The Blue-coat Boy 155 
 
 surroundings of Crown Office Row, his birthplace ; Foun- 
 tain Court bordered by the Elizabethan Middle Temple 
 Hall of the old Benchers, the terraced walk, the Temple 
 gardens and the Temple Church haunted by the ghosts of 
 the Templars, were his playground, places where his 
 romance-loving imagination glowed and was fed. To the 
 Boy always, it was an oasis in the heart of sunbaked 
 London, its green coolness keeping ever young the soul of 
 this great city of unnumbered miles of arid streets 
 crowded with people and echoing the eternal roar of a 
 world's commerce. No sound of this outside struggle 
 for existence penetrated to the cool peace of Fountain 
 Court ; only the song of the mavis in springtime and the 
 silvery splash of the playing fountain broke in upon its 
 brooding quiet, the voice of the fountain recalling to the 
 Boy how, for the benefit of his playmates, he had made 
 the water rise and fall as if by magic, making him thus 
 a hero in their eyes. This hero worship of his fellows 
 gave to the Boy a certain keen satisfaction, his marked 
 insignificance of stature, which his nervous timidity of 
 manner and stuttering speech accentuated, making him 
 peculiarly sensitive to the contemptuous attitude assumed 
 by the sturdier lads toward a physical inferior. Yet there 
 was something in the Boy's infinite gentleness and quaint 
 humor that won them in the end, — this boy who, despite 
 his puny frame, stood shoulder-high above them. It 
 was he who told them stories of the Knights Templars 
 under the shadow of the Elizabethan Hall in the noonday 
 hush of the Fountain Court, tales of their prowess in the 
 East in defense of the Holy Sepulchre. As he wove his 
 tales, his hazel eyes shot fire, or grew dreamy lost in his 
 dream world of the past; for those stone armored figures 
 lying cross-legged in the Temple Church had made a 
 deep impress on the Boy's mind, stirring his imagination 
 
156 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 not only by their knightly courage and daring, but by the 
 life of self-sacrifice and austere devotion to duty as re- 
 vealed in the early days of the Order before the dry-rot 
 of prosperity had riddled their nobility with self-indul- 
 gence. Many an afternoon the Boy had slipped into the 
 empty church there to dream amid the silence of those 
 majestic effigies, while the summer sun crept through the 
 mullioned windows touching the shadows with an ethereal 
 jeweled light. Or he would, perchance, linger in the long 
 June twilight in the Fountain Court, to creep solitary 
 and unobserved into the ancient Hall of the Benchers, 
 shrouded in the ghost-hung memories of Elizabethan 
 splendor, — memories crowned by the transparent glory of 
 a Shakespeare whose "Twelfth Night" was produced 
 within the rich sombreness of this mediaeval hall. 
 
 Then there was the stately terrace used by the old 
 Benchers of the Inner Temple ; and many a day the Boy 
 could remember seeing Thomas Coventry, "whose person 
 was quadrate, his face square as the lion's, his gait per- 
 emptory and path-keeping," a staunch Tory, pacing to 
 and fro on the terrace with his pensive gentile coeval 
 Samuel Salt, a stout Whig, the same Salt who early took 
 an interest in this youngest son of his worthy clerk, John 
 Lamb. This benevolent old man was quick to note in the 
 Boy the gentle manners, refined tastes and keen under- 
 standing of his parents, encouraging in the lad his love 
 of books by giving him free access to his library, a place 
 the Boy ever entered with a kind of reverent awe, the 
 lines of books upon the library shelves not mere dusty 
 tomes, but vitally alive, pregnant of the past that lives. 
 It was from his father the Boy inherited his love of 
 books, and that imagination which in the Boy was to re- 
 vivify the past for all time, the past touched out with 
 that sensitive understanding of humanity enveloping it in 
 
The Blue-coat Boy 157 
 
 perpetual modernity. The Boy's father had literary as- 
 pirations, and had even written several things of which 
 he was unduly proud. Yet the Boy, more finely tem- 
 pered than either of his parents, was never really under- 
 stood by them; his sensitiveness forcing him to shrink 
 more and more into himself, into that mystic world of 
 shadowy tradition shot with the rich gold of his imagina- 
 tion. Of these early years, the Boy remembered with 
 deep tenderness, his father's sister, the aunt who in her 
 own way understood him, giving to him an unselfish love 
 and devotion even to nursing him through smallpox when 
 he was but five. 
 
 Perhaps the dearest spot in the Temple precincts, was 
 the gardens washed by London's "busy silent highway," 
 the Thames, upon whose "brode aged back doth ride" 
 and gather the merchant ships from the four corners of 
 the earth. These gardens, heavy with the scent of roses, 
 and haunted still by memories of Shakespeare and the 
 rich pageantry of his time, thrilled the Boy with the rose- 
 gold magic of England's priceless heritage. Wandering 
 in the quiet garden, he would catch the far-off echo of 
 the swelling tide of England's greatness, those days of 
 Elizabeth when men dared all to win glory on the high 
 seas for their mother England; or poured forth the 
 richness of their minds as lavishly as their blood, those 
 lustrous pearls of a great age to gleam forever, jewels of 
 England's crown, an heritage to which this boy of the 
 Temple would add a translucent glory all his own. Into 
 this garden of flowers and quiet walks the Boy would 
 steal away from his companions to wander amid its soli- 
 tudes, or to lie beneath the ancient sycamore of Shakes- 
 peare's time and dream away the hours, his soul swinging 
 free into the measureless blue spaces of rich fancy. 
 While toward the sunset hour, he loved to hang upon the 
 
158 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 parapet above the river, watching the ebb and flow of 
 those white-winged birds of passage upon the sun- 
 drowned waters of the Thames, these merchantment in 
 fancy pictured in all the splendid pageantry of other days, 
 those days of Elizabethan magnificence when from these 
 same gardens one could see, 
 
 "London herself on her proud stream afloat, 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 Holding due course to Westminster." 
 
 Westminster, Chelsea, Twickenham, the fleet of merchant 
 ships gathered in the roadway of the Thames, each phase 
 an integral part making rich and firm the woven texture 
 of the nation's manifold life. It was to the keen ob- 
 serving Boy as he stood by the parapet of the old gardens, 
 as if he saw the life of England passing to and fro upon 
 the "brode-backed" Thames, her every mood reflected 
 upon the silvery waters, the temper of these moods set 
 and carved upon the brick and stone-faced masonry 
 edging the river's banks, this river winding between the 
 smoked grimed gray of the city, of Chelsea and of West- 
 minster, and beyond into the quiet green of Hampton 
 Court and Twickenham; until at length the towers of 
 Oxford found reflection in its still calm. Oxford, the 
 magic of whose name would ever draw the Boy as a 
 magnet, the Oxford for which his soul craved, would 
 always be denied him because of his stuttering speech. 
 Though in his seventh year the Boy knew he was destined 
 through the kind interest of Mr. Salt to be presented to 
 the school of Christ's Hospital, yet he might never hope 
 for the much-coveted University scholarship, which was 
 only open to those intending to study for priest's orders, 
 a calling from which his halting speech debarred him. So 
 it was that the Boy shut out from this time-weathered 
 city of his dreams, entered by another gate through which 
 
The Blue-coat Boy 159 
 
 he had free access, the gateway of his imagination, 
 peopling it with the great minds of England, revivifying 
 thus, not the past alone, nor the present that he knew, 
 but reaching out with prophetic vision into the mist- 
 veiled future pregnant with rich possibilites. Thus the 
 Boy, because of his power of vision, to look forward as 
 well as into a quickened past, was to belong not merely to 
 his own age, but to all ages, possessing as he did the 
 secret of perpetual youth, modernity as marked a charac- 
 teristic in him as his power to revivify and crystallize the 
 richness of the past. 
 
 It was from his father the Boy inherited a magnificent 
 democracy, a burning sense of justice and true chivalry 
 coupled with a deep reverence for those in authority and 
 for tradition. Swift in action to defend the weak and 
 oppressed even to the defiance of some prig of quality; 
 yet ever ready to show the deference due those whose 
 nobility was as patent as their title. This reverence for 
 tradition and for nobility was deepened in the Boy by his 
 visits to his grandmother, the worthy housekeeper of the 
 ancient family of Plumer. The atmosphere of the old 
 mansion of Blakesware in Hertfordshire, where he was 
 free to wander at will, gave him "a peep at the contrasting 
 accidents of great good fortune," creating likewise "an 
 alliance with that gentility of soul which to appreciate is 
 to share, the value of high lineage, the spirit of nobleness 
 which breathes around it." Every nook and corner of the 
 old place held its magic for the Boy, awakening in him 
 a knowledge of a world rich in tradition, in literature and 
 in art, a world broader and more wonderful than he had 
 dreamed of in the frugal homeliness of the more re- 
 stricted boundaries of his home world ; impregnating him 
 with that "feeling of gentility" linking him with those of 
 gentle birth. There was the store room in whose "hot 
 
160 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 window seat" he read Cowley to the "hum and flapping of 
 a solitary wasp" ; the paneled yellow room and the tap- 
 estried bedrooms peopled with Greek gods and goddesses 
 as well as haunted by the century-long line of ancestral 
 inmates. The picture gallery, replete with fine old family 
 portraits, held an especial fascination for the Boy, and 
 many a rainy afternoon he lingered there, giving free 
 rein to his imagination, each portrait woven about with 
 a romance of his own weaving, seeing in them at last 
 through his intimacy of fanciful imaginings, family like- 
 nesses, the plebeian claiming thus kinship with nobility, all 
 differences absorbed and forgotten where souls of the 
 same noble strain meet and recognize one another. Then, 
 too, there was the "costly fruit garden" with its sun- 
 baked southern wall ; the "ampler pleasure garden" rising 
 backward from the house in triple terraces and crammed 
 with flowers, a riot of color making the air heavy with 
 their fragrance; and beyond this quiet, cultural beauty, 
 rose the dark tips of a "firry wilderness" haunt of the 
 squirrel and the wood pigeon, the mavis and the nightin- 
 gale. So this lonely child found in this solitude, not "the 
 mother of thought but the feeder of love and silence and 
 admiration" for the rich heritage of tradition, — this 
 glimpse into this wide horizoned world to be incorporated 
 into the Boy's very being, deepening his vision, enriching 
 his imagination, giving him kinship with the highest and 
 the best. 
 
 The Inner Temple and the old house in Hertfordshire, 
 the setting of his earliest childhood, was augmented when 
 at seven he was presented to the school of Christ's Hos- 
 pital by one Timothy Yeates, Governor, these school days 
 to be, perchance, the most potent in the Boy's whole life. 
 The buffeting by the upper boys, the severe discipline, the 
 bad food and the bitter loneliness, were lost, sunk in the 
 
The Blue-coat Boy 161 
 
 soft beauty of the fragmentary cloisters, pregnant of the 
 past, and luminous with the memories of his meeting, 
 his budding friendship and his talks with the "inspired 
 charity boy," Samuel Coleridge. Many a day these two 
 Blue-Coat boys had stolen into the quiet cloisters for a 
 talk, the walls of the ancient Grey Friars re-echoing to 
 the accents of the "inspired charity boy" whose speech 
 entranced and inspired the Boy of the Inner Temple, 
 though it made him cling more closely to realities; for 
 even then Coleridge revealed the roving spirit of his 
 "ancient mariner," his restless spirit seeking the wooded 
 bypaths of Shropshire. While the Boy born within the 
 shadow of the Temple clung to the surroundings that he 
 knew. City bred, he loved passionately the smoke-stained 
 buildings and gray skies of London, the green fields and 
 the hedgerows he loved best lying within the city's very 
 heart. In the last days of his school life at Christ's Hos- 
 pital, the Boy, possessed of the self-concentration of the 
 young monk, had sought more and more the quiet peace 
 of the moss-grown cloisters. This was the peace, the at- 
 mospheric calm in which his contemplative spirit loved to 
 dwell. From the deep shadows of the cloister, his vision 
 gleamed forth luminous, quickened by a mingling of 
 gentle, whimsical humor and keen observation, interpre- 
 tive rather than prophetic. Looking out upon the cloister 
 garth in those last days, the Boy had somehow visioned 
 the future lying beyond, a future opening upon quiet 
 ways, full of self-sacrifice and stern duty, and tender, 
 loving devotion to the sister whom he adored, his heritage 
 the past, which was to be by his subtle pen revivified into 
 a living and an abiding present, even as his spirit being 
 enriched by the atmosphere of century-old greatness in 
 which he had always dwelt, would express ever the 
 springtime of an immortal youth. 
 
KEATS— THE BOY OF GREECE 
 
 • 
 
 THE soggy grayness of the November fog shrouded 
 the London streets. The smoke-stained houses of 
 Museum Street lay wrapped in its mysterious gloom as 
 a boy, brown-eyed and golden-haired, made his way 
 through this sleepy by-street toward the British Museum, 
 his step buoyant, his head thrown back as if expectant, 
 his thoughts unmindful, seemingly, of the dank, grayness 
 clinging to his black clothes, and to the crisp curls es- 
 caping from beneath the cap he wore. He paused a 
 moment within the classic entrance to the Museum, ever 
 a place of mystery, of romance and wonder to the lad. 
 Then, with the wonder deepening in his eyes, he made his 
 way through the Roman sculptures, nor did he pause until 
 he reached the Elgin Room, rich in its treasures of ancient 
 Greece. 
 
 As the Boy, John Keats, slipped into that room, the 
 gray, dripping fog outside in the London street was, of 
 a sudden, sunshot with the golden beauty of Greece, that 
 Greece lapped by the violet waters of the ^gean Sea. The 
 Boy was caught up into a realm of poetic beauty, of 
 heroic splendor, a world where gods and goddesses lived, 
 moved and had their being for him. Since that chance 
 visit, when as a tiny lad he had been brought to the 
 British Museum by his sailor uncle, these broken frag- 
 ments of Doric Greece had stirred something within him, 
 had claimed his kinship with Pan and Ganymede, and all 
 that host of pagan heroes of an age far-off yet immortal, 
 Did yet ever young; for the Boy's soul was possessed of a 
 
 162 
 
The Boy of Greece 163 
 
 strange mingling of Greek and Anglo-Saxon, the Greek 
 the dominant note, its clear-cut whiteness of expression 
 veiled in the soft mellowness and imagery of the English 
 countryside in springtime. Thus, it happened that on 
 every chance holiday in London, the Boy would steal 
 away from his companions, spending hours among those 
 blocks of living stone. 
 
 It was the heroic that first gripped the lad, those six- 
 teen metopes from the Parthenon representing on gigantic 
 scale the battle between the Centaurs and the Athenians 
 assisted by the Lapithae, telling their epic story in stone 
 made living by the divine breath of the sculptor Pheidias, 
 each metope depicting some phase of the battle, now the 
 Centaurs victorious, now the Athenians, now a seeming 
 stalemate, or a surging movement when the victory hung 
 in midair, dependent on the favor of the gods. Through 
 it all ran that breathless, pulsing life, from the taut figures 
 of the warriors to the straining, pulsing horses so full of 
 wild restraint, its very virility finding such swift response 
 in the Boy, that virility, that love of action, that wild 
 strain of adventure coming to him an inheritance from 
 his Cornish father. So did this heroic quality in the Elgin 
 marbles kindle the Boy's imagination to a white heat 
 that was never to cool nor grow dim. This small, com- 
 pact, broad-chested lad was all energy and fire. Daring, 
 defiant, pugnacious he was, yet full of goodwill and 
 generosity, his high spirits offset by a brooding melan- 
 choly, the loneliness of genius, this dual nature struggling 
 within him for mastery. Passion would sweep him like 
 a tropical gust only to leave him in misery, swayed by a 
 grief so poignant as to paralyze his energies. His terrier 
 courage won him leadership among his school-fellows. 
 His magnanimity and loyalty won him friends, — this 
 staunch loyalty toward those he loved characteristic of 
 
164 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 him even at five, his father finding him, sword in hand, 
 guarding the entrance to his mother's bedroom where she 
 lay ill, his sturdy little figure erect, his brown eyes glow- 
 ing, ready to eject a would-be intruder upon his beloved 
 mother. 
 
 As he stood there before those heroic fragments of 
 Greece, the Boy became conscious of his black clothes, 
 and the reason of his coming ; for the second great sorrow 
 of his life had come to the lad in the death, a few weeks 
 before, of his adored mother, a woman commonplace, 
 pleasure seeking, shallow even, yet holding the lad's 
 fealty and love by that sacred bond of her motherhood, 
 that bond of heritage and understanding that mother and 
 son accepted without question. Feverishly oversensitive 
 the lad was, like his mother, as he was morbidly passion- 
 ate, this inheritance from his mother balanced by those 
 qualities handed down to him by his father ; for from his 
 father the Boy possessed manliness and a hard common 
 sense, a vision crystal clear, a judgment that offset what 
 might otherwise have been an instability that would have 
 marred the poetic beauty and clarity of his creative 
 faculty. The Boy's quivering nerves begot his creative 
 power, a power that came as part of his Cornish heritage 
 as well as from his premature birth ; for Thomas Keats, 
 head liveryman of the "Swan & Hoop" of Moorfields, 
 London, came from Land's End, a place where wild 
 beauty and romance, daring adventure and love of the 
 sea were the daily breath of Cornishmen. So hidden be- 
 neath this outer crust of hard, common sense, Thomas 
 Keats gave to this hyper-sensitive son of his, all the rich- 
 ness of a Cornish heritage, a heritage flushed with the 
 sun-flecked rugged beauty of Tintagel washed by a green- 
 gold sea, that gold web of romance clustering about the 
 mouldering walls of Arthur's castle, the cave of Merlin 
 
The Boy of Greece 165 
 
 and the Table Round. This rich mine of romance and 
 legendary lore was a constant stimulus to the lad's im- 
 agination, his love of the sea bound up with that wreck- 
 strewn Cornish coast, yet colored ever by the intenser, all- 
 pervading beauty of the Greek, a beauty, not of nature, 
 but of art, these two to be blended in the Boy, and so to 
 bubble forth from that Pierian Spring with which the 
 Muses had endowed him, a passionate outpouring of 
 beauty, that magic tapestried richness of texture and ex- 
 pression which is the "innermost soul of poetry." 
 
 As the Boy wandered among those silent, soul-stirring 
 Greek figures, striving to assuage his loneliness and grief, 
 to draw strength from their sublime heroic calm and 
 beauty, he paused before the broken figure of Nike that 
 once adorned the western pediment of the Parthenon. 
 Nike the Wingless Victory, driving the car of Athena, is 
 approaching the goddess who is about to enter it, having 
 conquered Poseidon in their contest for the honor of 
 naming the city of Athens, and as he stood there drinking 
 in its beauty, there awakened in the lad for the first time, 
 a conscious desire to express the emotions stirring him. 
 Of a sudden the chaos of his energies became concen- 
 trated into an intellectual ambition, the intensity of his 
 nature developing into a burning desire for knowledge, a 
 craving for conquest, not as heretofore, with his fists, 
 but in the kingdom of his mind. His thoughts slipped 
 back to his school at Enfield, ten miles to the north of 
 London, the red brick Eighteenth Century building where 
 he had spent the last seven years, its ivy-grown, homely 
 beauty dear to him since that first day when with his 
 brother Tom he had come a "litel clergeon" in frocks, 
 caring nothing for books, always as ready as a gamecock 
 for a fight. This very pugnacity, so closely allied in 
 him with generosity and an utter inability to do a mean 
 
166 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 action, had won him many a friend, and he had become 
 the pet prize fighter of the school. On one occasion, he 
 had attacked an usher of the school, a boy twice his size, 
 because the usher had boxed his brother Tom's ears. He 
 and his younger brother George were always fighting, a 
 fact that seemed to increase rather than decrease their 
 deep affection for one another. 
 
 Yet underneath this rough and tumble play, the shout- 
 ing and the ceaseless scuffling and noise, there lay the 
 deeper nature of the Boy as yet scarcely awake, uncon- 
 scious of his high destiny, this deeper self reaching out 
 to feast his soul upon the quiet beauty, the world of 
 silence enveloping the main building, the garden where 
 he might slip away and dream his dreams, and soak his 
 soul in beauty, — the vista that he caught beyond, the 
 garden gate, the pond, the patch of woodland, the sweep 
 of emerald meadow dotted with cattle — , holding for 
 him always the deep, spiritual significance in its quiet 
 beauty and rich mellowness, that truth which is forever 
 beauty, that beauty which is forever truth. 
 
 John had always loved music, and many a night when 
 the rest of the dormitory was asleep, the Boy would 
 creep to the window overlooking the moonlit garden, 
 sitting there enrapt, listening to the headmaster's son 
 playing in the room beneath him, music this friend of 
 his, Cowden Clarke, was to hear again in after years 
 in an old castle on St. Agnes' Eve, "yearning like a God 
 in pain." Out of that night had blossomed a friend- 
 ship between these two lads never to die, a friendship 
 in which the lad Cowden brought to his friend John 
 Keats the essence of culture, surrounding him not only 
 with that atmosphere of art and literature pervading the 
 headmaster's home, but opening up for him the rich- 
 ness and the splendor of the Elizabethan Age, firing 
 
The Boy of Greece 167 
 
 the Boy's imagination, saturating his soul in beauty. 
 Hours at a time, through the long summer days, the 
 lads spent in the arbor of the school garden, while Cow- 
 den read "Epithalamion" and "The Faerie Queene" to the 
 Boy, until John, looking out upon the distant woods 
 and meadowland, gazed upon the magic beauty of an 
 elysian domain peopled with fairy folk flung against the 
 rich tapestried background of mediaeval chivalry and 
 romance. Later, the Boy's imagination was to be further 
 stimulated by Coleridge, Wordsworth and Scott's ro- 
 mantic lays ; but it was the robustness of the Elizabethan 
 Spencer that had kindled and set on fire the sleeping 
 genius in the lad. The sluice gates of the surging flood 
 of English Literature were thus flung open wide to the 
 Boy, never to close again, and in this boundless world of 
 rich imagination the Boy wandered at will, his soul swung 
 free, a place of refuge whither he might flee to steep his 
 soul in beauty. Greek beauty clothed in the soft rich 
 texture of English imagery, this English lad of Greece 
 was to give back, adding thus to the treasure house 
 from whence he had gleaned and garnered its riches, 
 fusing them with the delicate grace, the godlike beauty 
 of the Greek, bedrock and well-spring of all art and 
 beauty. Yet it was not books alone that were his 
 teacher. Nature played too upon the sensitive, violin 
 nature of the lad, the vital English beauty playing upon 
 the vibrant soul of him until he gave back of its music. 
 While he was still at Enfield, and even now living at 
 Edmonton, some two miles from his old school, where his 
 guardian had apprenticed him to a surgeon, John had 
 tramped the low, mist-hung hills edging the valley of 
 tihe Lea, had rambled through the deep green aisles of 
 Epping Forest and over the wind-blown meadows of En- 
 field Chase, steeping his soul in beauty, filled with the 
 
i68 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 delicious sense of the myriad activities of nature's pulsing 
 life in wood and field, in brook and croft and hedgerow, 
 the spring air heavy with the scent of May, the fields 
 carpeted with lush grass flecked with poppies and with 
 cornflowers. This vibrant beauty creeped into the Boy's 
 soul, a beauty akin to pain, so exquisite and poignant 
 was it, through which the figures of Greek Mythology 
 floated, those "leaf-fringed" legends 
 
 "Of deities or mortals, or of both, 
 In Tempe or the dales of Arcady." 
 
 As ever in the lad's soul echoed those unheard melodies 
 of the Pan pipes, he, with his liquid, tawny eyes flash- 
 ing, his face like a young god, wandered among those 
 immortals with the inward look, seeing visions, dream- 
 ing dreams, waiting, all unconscious, for the spring 
 flood when his soul would pour out in immortal verse 
 the immortal music of the gods, the passionate, liquid 
 music of his own nightingale. 
 
 Fired by a sudden hunger for books, the Boy had 
 poured over Lempiere's Classical Dictionary, a book that 
 was to give him his first knowledge of the Greek world 
 of myths and legends, of gods and goddesses and all 
 that dazzling world of heroes. So he read further 
 Tooke's "Pantheon" and Spence's "Polynetis." Absorbed 
 in this new world in which he found himself, the lad 
 was impervious for a time to the chaffing of his school 
 fellows. A climax was reached, however, when he 
 brought to the refectory Bishop Burnet's "History of my 
 Own Times" to read during the noonday meal, the lad 
 settling with his fists his right to read when and where 
 he chose, even as it stamped his undisputed leadership. 
 
 As the Boy stood before Nike, the Wingless Victory, 
 other memories came crowding in, memories of his 
 
The Boy of Greece 169 
 
 uncle, the naval officer who was the ideal hero of John 
 and his brothers' dreams, a man of stalwart presence, 
 who had acquitted himself with honor on Admiral Dun- 
 can's ship in the famous engagement off Camperdown, 
 that added another glorious page in the history of the 
 British Navy. It was he who told them tales of Drake 
 and Raleigh, and of deeds of that great host of Eng- 
 land's heroes of the high seas. This hero's giant form 
 playing upon the fancy of the Boy, became merged in 
 the child's mind with the heroic figure of Poseidon, who 
 with his trident once adorned the western pediment of 
 the Parthenon, whose broken fragments in the Elgin 
 Room of the British Museum, were to make this Eng- 
 lish lad's soul Greek. 
 
 There had been a certain indefinable comradeship 
 between the lad and his hard-headed father, that in- 
 herent love of the soil, of Cornwall with its grim, rugged 
 beauty that drew them silently together, a companionship 
 of few words but of deep understanding, so rudely 
 broken by his father's sudden death when the Boy was 
 only nine. So grief, blinding and overwhelming had 
 come for the first time into his life. His father came 
 often to the school to visit his sons, and on returning 
 had dined at Southgate before proceeding on his way. 
 When on the City Road, shortly after leaving the inn, 
 the horse had slipped and fallen, throwing his master 
 whose skull was crushed, death sweeping out this hardy 
 Cornishman as swiftly as a leaf caught in the tideway 
 at Tintagel. These and many thoughts of his past swept 
 the Boy as the fog dripped in the sodden streets outside. 
 His life had been shaken to its foundations in the loss 
 of his mother. The past was as if it were not ; the present 
 was gray and purposeless ; the future blurred and deso- 
 late. Yet as he moved among those Grecian fragments, 
 
170 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 their golden beauty mellowed in his soul and he awoke, 
 conscious of that inner light burning forever in the 
 soul, a light fed by an imagination enkindled by a 
 vision whose beauty and strength was of the hills. In 
 beauty he was to clothe his soul, the beauty of Greek 
 art, the deeper spiritual beauty of the woods and hills; 
 for he was in the very essence of his being, a child of 
 nature, that mingling of shyness and of the wild in him 
 peeping out from his tawny eyes, suggestive of a faun 
 lurking among the thickets and olive groves of Greece. 
 His sensitive mouth would quiver with emotion as the 
 beauty of nature played upon him like a bow upon 
 the strings of a violin. Especially was he affected 
 by the wind sweeping across forest trees, their soughing 
 suggestive to him of the sea and the coming of the 
 tide. For hours together he would stand like a shy 
 faun, half hid by the bracken, listening to its music, his 
 eyes softly radiant. "The tide! the tide!" he would cry, 
 springing lightly up to an overhanging branch, there 
 to watch the passing of the wind across the meadow 
 grasses or the corn, not stirring until the breeze was 
 all about him, rapture in his eyes, his face aglow, eager, 
 expectant, as if he listened for some cry, some signal 
 from the forest depths, the sentiency of nature gripping 
 him vitally. 
 
 As he stood absorbed in the bas-relief of Pan seated 
 upon a rock, the nymph Echo enveloped in drapery 
 standing before the god, it was as if the soul of Pan 
 entered the Boy's soul, his wild haunting music echoing 
 in his brain and heart until the lad gave forth again the 
 immortal music of those Pan pipes, At last he knew, 
 this Boy of Greece, the path he was to follow, the future 
 for him no longer blurred and desolate, but golden hued, 
 lapped by the violet waters of the Egean Sea ; yet colored, 
 
The Boy of Greece 171 
 
 too, by the rich softness of the English countryside. 
 Pan and the gods were calling, and he, vibrant with their 
 music, knew himself a singer, a son of Polymnia, a 
 minstrel whose home was green forest aisles and the 
 classic realms of art, whose music was of the immortal 
 spheres, whose span of life, short though it was to prove, 
 was yet to encompass the world of music and of beauty. 
 Thus with a deepening wonder in his shy, wild eyes, the 
 Boy dreamed on, hearing Pan piping in the reeds, now 
 close at hand, now but the spirit music of wind bells 
 in the silvered oaks bordering a sunlit glade, the nymph 
 Echo floating upon the wings of the passing zephyr, 
 sweeping the Boy across the limitless spaces where time 
 is not, where only beauty breathes the immortality of its 
 
 joy- 
 As the Boy turned away from this room flooded with 
 the golden glow of Greek beauty, of Greek art, the Boy 
 knew himself a Greek, a boy no longer merely of the 
 London streets, but also of that land of immortal beauty 
 and of art in all its chasteness and perfection, glowing 
 still those living blocks of stone, fused with the breath 
 of life breathed into them by the flamelike genius of 
 the immortal Pheidias. So did this Boy, the immortal 
 singer of beauty to be, go forth, the sunshine of Greece 
 flooding his heart, forgetful of the dank, dripping fog 
 blanketing the London street; for his vision pierced 
 its grayness, or wove its strands into an iridescent web 
 of beauty by which he reached the stars. His spirit 
 floated free even as the music of the Pan pipes, the 
 nymph Echo bearing it to the four corners of the earth, 
 and beyond. He, too, though he knew it but in a dream, 
 was of the company of the immortals, and in the Elgin 
 Room, all unknowing he had sought his own company. 
 As he stumbled along the ill-lighted street in the chill 
 
172 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 dusk of the November afternoon, he trod, of a truth, 
 the elysian fields of fancy, a faun lurking in the bracken 
 listening to the music of the wind god piping his music 
 by streams and through forest aisles, or weaving nature's 
 colored textures into the richness of immortal verse, — 
 John Keats, the Boy of Greece, hymning of the beauty 
 which to him was truth, as it was also a joy forever. 
 
LINCOLN— THE BOY OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 TTE was standing at the edge of the clearing, within 
 ■*■ ■*■ the shadow of great forest trees, a tall, gaunt 
 figure of a lad, looking out across the fields from which 
 the harvest had been lately garnered. About him the 
 gold glow of an October day, the quivering stillness' 
 of the sunset hour, the only sound the purr of Little 
 Pigeon Creek winding its way through green forest 
 glades and dim forest aisles toward the distant river. 
 Primeval forest in all its majesty was the deep setting 
 of the boy Abe's whole life, even as the clearing was the 
 work of his own toil-worn hands, the clearing by which 
 sunshine had crept into the forest's heart. He leaned 
 against a tree, axe in hand, his cap of coon pushed 
 back from his face, a face that even at seventeen was 
 that of a great spirited child who year after year had 
 battled against poverty, his high intelligence starving for 
 the simple appliances of education that in that wilder- 
 ness had always been denied him. Yet in the glow of 
 those deep-set eyes, looking out toward the western 
 sky, there flamed a spirit no obstacles could break down, 
 no discouragements quench. As his strength and stature 
 were even now beyond those of ordinary men, so was 
 his will power. With the simple directness of the pioneer, 
 and the vision of one who lives with nature, he saw 
 beyond the clearing with its encircling trees to the vaster 
 horizon of the sunset whither he dimly knew destiny was 
 calling him. What his work was to be out there beyond 
 the confines of the forest he knew not ; yet that his road 
 
 i73 
 
174 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 led thither he had no doubt, a road upon which in the 
 coming months he would have set his foot never to re- 
 turn. Clad in tanned deer hide, his feet shod with 
 moccasins, his very dress proclaimed his pioneer life, its 
 poverty and its struggle; yet they were symbols, too, 
 of the power and richness of the traditions of which he 
 was the heir. The strength of a sound inheritance and 
 the virtues of a pioneer life were his, and upon that 
 sure foundation his whole life was to be built and fash- 
 ioned. 
 
 His eyes intent upon the road across the clearing that 
 was opening for him, the Boy's mind swept backward, 
 spanning the short years of his life, years for the most 
 part, a dull monotone of toil and hardship and of lone- 
 liness, a loneliness that had bred in him the need and 
 the cultivation of his world of imagination, a world 
 colored and peopled by the child, a refuge whither 
 he could slip away and forget the cheerlessness of a home 
 that held for him neither the tender love nor devotion 
 for which a child's heart yearns. His father, a tall, 
 sinewy, well-knit man of medium height, was by trade a 
 carpenter, a good man yet without ambition, his shiftless- 
 ness the cause of much of the discomfort in this frontier 
 home. It was from his handsome mother, Nancy Hanks, 
 the Boy came by his fine intellect and those stirrings of 
 ambition driving him to overcome all obstacles in his 
 struggle to better his condition. He possessed the in- 
 stinct to develop himself by every means in his power, 
 an instinct coupled with an indomitable will that refused 
 to be swerved by the seemingly insurmountable. A 
 wistful mirthfulness mingled with melancholy due to his 
 surroundings became ingrained in the Boy's character; 
 for from babyhood the Boy lived his own lonely life in 
 the woods, returning from solitary games of his own 
 
The Boy of Democracy 175 
 
 invention to a cheerless fireside. Yet the innate nobility 
 of the Boy's nature transcended the utter lack of ad- 
 vantages for the cultivation of mind and spirit in that far- 
 off wilderness. He made friends with the birds and 
 animals of the forest, they coming to him without fear ; 
 for he spoke to them in a language which they under- 
 stood, and instinctively they seemed to know the kindli- 
 ness of his great heart. It was as if the rigors of this life 
 of the wilderness were a proving ground for the Boy's 
 future career when he should be called to serve his coun- 
 try in the first great crisis of the nation's life. As having 
 nothing yet possessing all things, this Boy of the track- 
 less forest was to hew his way out ,to the light. Patriot- 
 ism burned like a white flame in the Boy, as did that 
 quality of giving his all without reserve, a quality that 
 later, because of the Boy's democratic sense of sharing 
 with the individual, would reach out to the noblest ideals 
 of citizenship, that sense of national service that made him 
 great among his fellows. 
 
 The soldier's uniform stood always for him as a 
 symbol of that service; for he had been taught early 
 to revere the soldier's calling, the soldier being the pro- 
 tector of the home and of the helpless. Once in the 
 spring of 1812, returning from a fishing expedition, 
 a string of fish in his hand, he had met upon the dusty 
 road a soldier returning to his home on furlough. The 
 Boy paused and with shy reverence shining in his eyes, 
 he held out this trophy of his childish prowess to the 
 war-weary man. The soldier smiled down into the boy's 
 eager face, and sitting by the roadside, he told the boy 
 tales of the battlefield from whence he had come, of 
 the grim toll of war, of the battle for justice as the only 
 means to peace. 
 
 "It is a great and noble calling, lad, serving one's coun- 
 
176 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 try with the sword in the cause of right. Yet there are 
 other ways as noble. Service, that is a word to write 
 on all men's hearts, — service to one's country and one's 
 fellows." 
 
 This incident awakened, perhaps, the first stirrings in 
 the Boy of his passionate love of justice, whose roots 
 struck deep into the very bedrock of the Boy's char- 
 acter, this stout moral fibre and burning sense of justice 
 part of the lad's rich English heritage; a justice that 
 would seek no compromise nor reconciliation with wrong- 
 doing, that would without hesitation give its all in the 
 cause of right. This fighting spirit in the Boy, revealed 
 itself in his protective love of animals, his schoolfellows 
 dubbing him "Champion of Right," he winning the boys 
 by his sheer force of character to side with him, their 
 recognized leader. Once in the noon-day recess, Abe, as 
 was his wont, was at the bidding of his mates, making a 
 speech. Even then these school boys dimly perceived in 
 Abe the budding orator. The purport of the speech 
 matters not, but as he stood there on the tree stump 
 his hand outstretched in earnest exortation, a boy on the 
 edge of the crowd flung a turtle at Abe's head, the animal 
 falling crushed at the youthful orator's feet. Abe paused, 
 his dreamy eyes suddenly ablaze, his fists clenched as he 
 stepped down to where the suffering animal lay, his 
 strained face and figure relaxing to pity as he stooped to 
 gently lift the quivering creature so cruelly set upon. 
 The boys knowing his powerful strength, and how un- 
 hesitatingly he used it, watched him in awed silence as 
 he rose to face them; for his reputation as a wrestler 
 was respected in the neighborhood. Suddenly, as he stood 
 there, the Boy quivering with emotion, a great light 
 swept over his homely face, transfusing it; while with 
 tongue unloosed, he pleaded for kindness to dumb ani- 
 
The Boy of Democracy 177 
 
 mals, laying stress on their helplessness, his simple, native 
 eloquence winning sympathy for the crushed turtle lying 
 in his hand, a tide of resentment rising up against the 
 bully who had inflicted pain so wantonly, a resentment 
 that not only caused the boys to shun their comrade until 
 he showed signs of a genuine repentance, but that forced 
 the boy under guard to carry the turtle to the river where 
 it could safely rest until its new shell grew once more. 
 
 The Boy's mind following the blazed trail of his life 
 still further, he thought of Austin Gollaher, a boy some 
 three years his senior, one of the few companions of his 
 childhood with whom he had been on many an adventure, 
 love of adventure being inborn in the lad, that spirit 
 of the quest, of treading the unblazed trail so necessary 
 to accomplish what he had set out to do. It was at 
 Knob's Creek, a year before Abe's father struck deeper 
 into the wilderness, that Abe and Austin had been off 
 after partridges, and Austin had proved himself a hero ; 
 for Abe had been intent upon pursuing a brace of par- 
 tridges. While "cooning across" he had fallen in, Austin's 
 swift aid with a handy sycamore branch alone saving him 
 from drowning. So destiny intervened for a nation's 
 future welfare. 
 
 It was when the family moved from Knob Creek to 
 the rich fertile forest country of Little Pigeon Creek, 
 from Kentucky to Indiana, that the real hardships of 
 life began to press in upon the Boy; for that first year 
 in the wilderness in a rude half-faced cabin was a severe 
 test even to the hardened pioneer. So primitive was this 
 log cabin sheltered by forest trees, and surrounded by a 
 stockade, that the only access to the loft where each night 
 Abe sought his bed of leaves, was by pegs driven into the 
 logs forming the cabin walls. Here, too, the first deep 
 sorrow came to the lonely child, the death of his mother 
 
ijS A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 from the "milk sickness." The death of his mother 
 was a great grief to the Boy; for in his silent way 
 he had worshipped and loved her, his grief revealing 
 itself months after her going in his persistent efforts, 
 despite his nine years, to seek out and bring to their 
 world's end settlement a preacher who would preach a 
 sermon and hold service at the grave of his beloved 
 dead. Nor did the Boy rest until he had procured the 
 services of one David Elkin, an itinerant preacher who 
 came and set apart the little plot of grouad where the 
 good woman had been laid. 
 
 Within a year of his mother's death, the Boy's father 
 married again one Sarah Bash, and with her coming 
 sunshine crept into the desolate home. For the first 
 time in his life the Boy knew the true meaning of the 
 word home, a place of cheer and comfort in so far as 
 the wilderness permitted, a place permeated by love and 
 the sunshine that love brings; for despite her many ex- 
 cellent qualities, Abe's mother from her very reserve 
 had withheld, unconsciously perhaps, the outward ex- 
 pression of the love she bore her children, lacking also 
 the art of making a home out of the simple things she 
 had. He and his sister, Nancy, basked in this atmosphere, 
 turning to this bright-faced woman whom they soon 
 learned to call mother with that instinctive directness of 
 the child who quickly recognizes love thus given. Sarah 
 Bash, taking these two neglected orphans, especially 
 Abe, to her heart, she clothed them warmer and saw to 
 their wants, besides educating them as far as power in 
 her lay; for she was quick to recognize in the Boy his 
 burning thirst for knowledge, a thirst that she might 
 alleviate though, she knew full well, never quench. To 
 this step-mother of his, the Boy gave the whole love of his 
 
The Boy of Democracy 179 
 
 starved young heart, a devotion that remained constant 
 throughout his life. 
 
 Like a famished thing, the Boy seized upon education, 
 his active mind and fine intellect burning with a desire 
 to know not only of the great world beyond the dark 
 line of the forest, but of its riches, those intellectual 
 riches of which he vaguely surmised. That he would 
 never spend his life within these forest solitudes, the 
 step-mother quickly realized; for she was quick to note 
 the ambition in the Boy to better his condition, to reach 
 a world where he would some day match the latent pow- 
 ers within him with other men, ambition urging the 
 Boy to seize upon education as a means to accomplish 
 his purpose. Ambition leading him further, he desired 
 to possess an accomplishment unknown to his playmates. 
 Thus he learned to write. Yet this was but the super- 
 ficial outcrop of the deep desire of his heart. Nobler 
 reasons dominated the Boy. To help his elders and to 
 be able to copy what struck him in his reading, that he 
 might keep it for future use, were the underlying im- 
 pulses urging the Boy to reach a goal that would give 
 him superiority over his playmates, a superiority that 
 now and in the days to come would never be used 
 save in the service of his country and his fellows. His 
 schooling was of the crudest, and at best intermittent, 
 four weeks of schooling being allotted as a term by 
 the itinerant schoolmaster. The Boy's last days were 
 passed under one Swaney, whose schoolhouse stood some 
 four and a half miles from the Lincoln home, making a 
 daily walk of nine miles when winter came, a test of 
 the Boy's unflinching doggedness of purpose. 
 
 It was then his father set the Boy to work, the daily 
 grind of farm labor, a tiller of the fields by day, the 
 
180 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 tending of the stock at dawn and at early evening. 
 Through the long winter he became the woodsman; in 
 the summer the sower and the garnerer of grain. Yet 
 the Boy, nothing daunted by the unending toil, cheer- 
 fully did his share from cock's crow to the moon's 
 rising. His evenings he claimed as his own, and these 
 he devoted with renewed energy to his studies. His store 
 of books though small, was choice, consisting of the 
 Bible, "yEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "The Pil- 
 grim's Progress," a History of the United States and 
 Weems' "Life of Washington," the latter book, one over 
 which he pored and pondered much. This "Life of 
 Washington" came to him in this wise, its possession 
 being a turning point in the Boy's whole life; for from 
 it he gleaned not only the greatness of the man, but 
 his statesmanship and power of vision. Unconsciously 
 he stored away his vision of the country's first presi- 
 dent against the time when he should be called to serve 
 his country in a like capacity. Thus early was his ideal 
 of what an American and a patriot should be, planted 
 deep in the Boy's very soul. The book had been lent 
 him by his schoolmaster, one Crawford, a crabbed hard- 
 headed man, who in his rough way was fond of the Boy. 
 Despite his reverent care, so characteristic of the lad 
 where a book was involved, the rain leaking down 
 through a neglected hole in the roof one night, dripped 
 upon the shelf where the book lay, spoiling it past all 
 help. Manfully the Boy went to his old friend telling 
 him of the ruined book, telling him that as soon as his 
 empty purse was full enough he would repay him. The 
 old man greeted his proposition gruffly, but told the Boy 
 the book was his if he would work it out on his farm. 
 Gladly the Boy agreed, giving three hard days' labor on 
 the farmer schoolmaster's farm before he became the 
 
The Boy of Democracy 181 
 
 proud owner of this life of Washington, earned as was all 
 he was to have in life, by hard, unremitting toil, his work 
 to be scarce recognized until he should have given even 
 his life in his country's service. 
 
 Often he would wander down to see his friend the 
 constable, David Turnham, this grizzled officer of the 
 law making the lad welcome. It was there, perhaps, Abe 
 formed his first taste for the law, he having found upon 
 the dusty book shelves a series of musty volumes en- 
 titled "The Revised Statutes of Indiana," books which 
 he eagerly devoured. From these the foundation of his 
 knowledge of the law was doubtless laid, his legal type 
 of mind grasping their content and guiding his thoughts 
 into these channels. Neighbors, too, let him borrow of 
 their slender store of books, a boon to the lad whose 
 slim purse could ill afford the purchase of many volumes. 
 It was then his weeks and months of patient striving 
 found its reward ; for it enabled him to take voluminous 
 notes from these books he could not buy, and these he 
 learned by heart, adding ever thus to an increasingly 
 rich store of knowledge. Nor did he end there. He 
 pondered over what he read, working out his own con- 
 clusions, conclusions which he oftentimes wrote down, 
 the seeds of his political speeches to be. His splendid 
 mind developed slowly, unfolding like a flower that long 
 in maturing, finally flings back the last petaled leaf of 
 its maturity, revealing the perfected flower. Slowly, 
 too, his power of reasoning and the native rhetoric so 
 preeminently his, improved, an improvement that was 
 to continue until the end of his life. Yet even here, 
 poverty baffled him; for he was too poor to buy paper 
 upon which to write down his thoughts, but was depend- 
 ent upon odd scraps he could find. Or, as more often 
 happened, he was obliged to leave his thoughts unex- 
 
182 A Boot of Boyhoods 
 
 pressed, its purpose by a wise Providence, perhaps, to 
 force him to break loose from the confines of his back- 
 water into the broad shining river of his dreams. Many 
 an afternoon he had crept away to the forest, there to 
 lie upon his back and dream of what life out there be- 
 yond the forest must be like, and what it was to hold 
 for him. Now at last the first glimpse of this magic 
 world was to be vouchsafed him; for with the spring 
 he was to ship as bow hand on a flat boat owned by Mr. 
 Gentry of Gentryville, he and another lad entrusted with 
 the care of the boat and the disposal of the cargo when 
 they had reached their destination, New Orleans. This 
 voyage was to prove a turning point in the Boy's future 
 career; for in the quaint old town permeated by its 
 former French occupation, Abe saw for the first time 
 fellow beings used as slaves. This trafficing with slaves 
 bit deep into the Boy's consciousness, awakening in him 
 an ineradicable hatred of slavery of any human being 
 white or black, this tiny spark enkindling in him a pas- 
 sionate desire to have all men free and equal/ a desire 
 that became the key-note of his whole life, his spirit 
 never resting until he had realized his ideal of democracy, 
 emancipation even at the price of blood. 
 
 The seeming narrow confines of his life of forest and 
 clearing was typical, really, of the Boy's whole life, 
 the training ground hardening him to endure, stiffening 
 his will as well as his muscles ; for his was to be to its 
 very end a pioneer's life, a life where he must blaze 
 the trail that others might find the way to reach a true 
 ideal of democracy, a democracy whose roots struck 
 deep into the soil, whose branches should reach the very 
 stars. This Boy of the soil, felling the forest trees to 
 make a clearing whence the sun might find its way into 
 the forest, sowing in early spring seed in a fallow, 
 
The Boy of Democracy 183 
 
 virgin soil that others through countless generations 
 might reap, was destined, though as yet he knew it 
 not, to perform a like service for his country for whose 
 welfare his whole life was to be spent and offered up. 
 Standing axe in hand on the edge of the clearing, the 
 sunset light shining in his dreamy eyes, the Boy caught 
 in that moment a swift vision of the future, a future 
 encompassing a forest ocean-bound into whose heart 
 he would let in the sun. The hardness of life he knew 
 and would know; but out of it would come also his 
 spiritual strength not only to endure, but to look up with 
 perfect faith toward the wide spaces of the sky, the 
 sower and the toiler, that his country, his fellowmen 
 might reap. 
 
HUXLEY— THE BOY OF EVOLUTION 
 
 THE Rattlesnake lay quietly at her moorings 
 in the Bay of Islands, where she had dropped 
 anchor for some needed repairs. She had made her way 
 from Sydney across the wastes of the Pacific only to 
 find the Falklands cold and bleak, the snow-clad hills 
 rimming the harbor barren and lifeless, save for the 
 weather-beaten town of Stanley, scattered along their 
 gaunt sides. So cold and cheerless was it, that only a 
 solitary figure paced the empty, silent deck. Slim and 
 lithe, he tramped back and forth clad in his great naval 
 coat, the maroon stripe set between the gold on his 
 sleeve designating him an assistant surgeon of the Royal 
 Navy. The rest of the ship's company was either ashore 
 or busy below decks, and Tom Huxley was taking ad- 
 vantage of this rare opportunity for solitude^ He needed 
 the quiet solitariness in which to give play to his sensi- 
 tive imagination, this Boy who, though his life was to 
 be spent among cold facts, was yet no less a dreamer of 
 dreams, a brooder over problems reaching into the very 
 heart of life. It was because of this power dwelling 
 within him, that he was able to reach so deep into facts, 
 illuminating them until the most abstruse problems 
 yielded up their secrets. 
 
 On this bleak, winter afternoon of the year 1850, 
 he was in contemplative mood, the years of his vanish- 
 ing boyhood spread out before him even as the steep 
 roadway of his future career was beckoning him onward 
 towards the heights, a road holding out to the Boy lone- 
 
 184 
 
The Boy of Evolution 185 
 
 liness and flint-strewn surfaces, yet at whose ending 
 hung the stars. His mind slipped back over the way he 
 had come, a solitary way, and one full of thorns; for 
 his schoolfellows had had no taste for the problems 
 which had flooded his mind, and over which he had 
 brooded continually. Driven in upon himself, his habit 
 of reserve increased, the Boy dwelt in a world apart, 
 going out to very few. To those few he gave his heart 
 with passionate, loyal devotion. As he gazed out across 
 the sea, his thoughts turned to his mother, whom in temp- 
 erament and in appearance he so closely resembled. 
 They had been such companions, these two, and he re- 
 called, how, in her dear gentle way, she had laughed 
 at him because he had thought he resembled in appear- 
 ance the handsome old vicar, Sir Herbert Oakley. Many 
 a time she had told him, how she had found him in the 
 kitchen, his pinafore turned wrong side out to look 
 like a surplice, he preaching to the maids in Sir Herbert's 
 best manner. He always loved to think of her best, as 
 he first remembered her, sitting by a window of the 
 Ealing house, his birthplace, her dark face illumined by 
 the sunset, her black eyes glowing as she had read to 
 him from Tennyson's King Arthur. He had thrown 
 himself upon the floor, and lay there gazing up at her, 
 absorbed in what she was reading, when suddenly she 
 paused, and in her vibrant voice had expressed her pleas- 
 ure in his tenacity of purpose in pushing to completion 
 a distasteful task. His dark eyes had flashed his love 
 up into hers, happy in her approbation. For that he 
 would have circled the earth ; for she controlled his fiery, 
 energetic temper by the wisdom of her love, her deep 
 sensitive understanding of him giving her rare insight. 
 They understood each other, this boy and his mother, 
 and her understanding sympathy was as balm to Tom's 
 
186 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 lonely heart. No greater punishment than his mother's 
 disapprobation could be meted out to the lad, and he 
 recalled with a smile how many a night he had lain 
 awake sobbing his heart out in morbid fear lest his 
 mother should die. 
 
 The lad's nature was finely balanced. Offsetting the 
 swift emotional energy, his inheritance from his dark- 
 eyed mother, he possessed that grim tenacity of purpose, 
 that hot temper, so silent and so deadly, because of the 
 quiet control behind it, so characteristic of his father, 
 together with the vigorous medium of expression through 
 his drawing, the lad's draughtmanship to be an asset to 
 him in his especial work always. His mother had handed 
 down to this boy of hers, her rapidity of thought, that 
 swift, intuitive grasp of things and situations Celtic in 
 its sensitive, imaginative sweep; while his father had 
 bestowed upon him that more Anglo-Saxon sceptical 
 quality of mind, that cool, clear-cut logic of the scientist, 
 of the thinker, a mind slow to accept until the proofs 
 are at hand, and disregarding authority merely as au- 
 thority. Together with these qualities, Tom possessed 
 a passionate love of truth, an open-hearted sincerity, 
 these mingled qualities giving him a broadmindedness, a 
 kindly tolerance and respect for other men's beliefs, a 
 wide-angled vision. Keen humor came to Tom also an 
 inheritance from his mother, a gift that would guide him 
 past many a reef besetting his course. 
 
 Tom's father was the senior assistant master of Dr. 
 Nicholas' School at Ealing, an "unreformed public 
 school" which combined enforced obedience to certain 
 rules with an utter disregard for the intellectual and 
 moral welfare of the boys. To reach the boys them- 
 selves, to guide them or help them in their school life, 
 was seemingly ignored by those in charge. The Boy 
 
The Boy of Evolution 187 
 
 recalled with a shudder, when he, a tiny lad of eight, 
 had been thrust into the midst of that heartless crowd 
 of school boys to be bullied and buffeted into the regula- 
 tion mould. Slight of build, the Boy, when roused, was 
 possessed of a wild-cat spirit, standing him in good 
 stead when one of the older lads had bullied him past 
 endurance. As swift in his movements as in his thoughts, 
 Tom sprang upon his adversary one day, trouncing him so 
 effectively that he had no further trouble through the re- 
 mainder of the two years he was at school at Ealing. 
 The two lads having bruised and battered each other 
 with their fists, made up their differences, schoolboy fash- 
 ion. One of the things, however, that bit deep into the 
 Boy's deep sense of justice, was the fact that although 
 he was the one attacked, it was he who was punished 
 for fighting, punishment lighting upon him because of 
 a tell-tale black eye ; while the aggressor went scot free. 
 It was these memories of his brief school days at Ealing, 
 brought abruptly to an end by the death of Dr. Nicholas, 
 that turned the trend of the lad's thoughts in maturer 
 years toward the question of reform in the educational 
 system of the land he loved so passionately, and which 
 all his life he served so loyally and so well. Many and 
 varied were the posts to which his country would call 
 him, yet clustering ever around the scientific research 
 work about which his whole life was centered; for this 
 Boy was essentially a seeker, his life spent upon an un- 
 ending quest, not merely after pure knowledge, but 
 probing deep into human life. A knowledge of life and 
 its causes absorbed him, making him realize in after years, 
 the need for introduction of science into the school cur- 
 riculums. His mind had turned early to speculation, 
 especially to that of metaphysics, another form of his 
 intense curiosity to discover the motive principle of 
 
188 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 things, their why and wherefore, and how they acted, a 
 tendency that had revealed itself in his love of engineer- 
 ing, and later of anatomy. No superficial reasons would 
 satisfy the lad, and he spent much of his time ransacking 
 his father's library, even getting up before dawn cold 
 winter mornings, a blanket pinned about him, to pour 
 by candlelight over Hutton's Geology. 
 
 It was at this time, shortly after the family removed 
 to Coventry, that Tom formed his first friendship with 
 a man nine years his senior. This disparity in age 
 between Tom and his new-found friend, George Ander- 
 son May, made little difference to this boy of. fifteen, 
 who discussed philosophy with his elders with a free- 
 dom and a mature outlook astonishing in so young a 
 boy. To George May the Boy, usually so reserved and 
 shy, felt free to go with his problems, telling him of 
 his aspirations and ideals, revealing his ideas on philoso- 
 phy and life. The older man not only received the 
 Boy's comments with seriousness, but gave him of his 
 sympathetic understanding; for he perceived in the lad 
 the first flush of his budding genius, recognizing, too, 
 the splendid mind lying fallow still, yet in which al- 
 ready the surface soil had been stirred. Tom and his 
 friend loved to tramp across country, and to the Boy pac- 
 ing the deck of the Rattlesnake, one soft September day 
 stood out with especial vividness. He and May had been 
 following the winding Sherbourne, its green meadows 
 dotted with cattle grazing, and under the shade of an 
 overhanging tree they had thrown themselves down to 
 rest. As the Boy lay there, gazing up through the 
 green branches at the blue sky, he had begun speaking of 
 his dream to be a mechanical engineer. The architectural 
 and engineering part of building gripped the lad, the 
 working out, not only of a plan in its unity, but the 
 
The Boy of Evolution 189 
 
 mechanical knowledge of how the countless parts fitted 
 one into another, the most infinitesimal being necessary 
 to the completion and perfection of the whole. So 
 later, when he finally entered upon his medical studies, 
 the Boy's interest lay, not primarily with the art of 
 healing, but in "the mechanical engineering of living 
 machines," in working out "the wonderful unity of plan 
 in the thousands and thousands of diverse living con- 
 structions, and their modifications," the study of these 
 intricacies of living organisms nearly proving fatal to 
 the lad through blood poisoning, caused by the dis- 
 section of a body. 
 
 "I want to be a mechanical engineer, George," Tom 
 flung out, "but Father is set on medicine for me." 
 
 "You don't like the idea?" 
 
 "Not as a profession for healing the sick," the Boy 
 answered picking up a stone. "Physiology is all right." 
 
 "Why physiology?" 
 
 "That's the architectural and engineering part of the 
 business," he flashed back, his black eyes glowing. 
 
 "You might be a geologist," May suggested after a 
 pause, pointing to the stone in Tom's hand. 
 
 "Yes, I might," the lad replied, fingering the stone. 
 "You know," he continued dreamily, studying the stone, 
 "you know, I have often wondered what would be- 
 come of things if their qualities were taken away." 
 
 May smiled at the Boy's intensity and deep brooding. 
 
 "It is a question striking into the very heart of the 
 law of the universe," was all he said. But it gave him 
 an insight into the lad's thoughtful nature, into the future 
 career of the man to be. This lad stretched upon the river 
 bank, drinking in the summer sunshine, would travel far ; 
 for he was, no idle questioner. His questing spirit would 
 flood his path with the problems of a great thinker, an 
 
190 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 interpreter of life, a solver of riddles, especially that 
 riddle of growth, the doctrine, in short, of evolution, 
 which is the mainspring of life itself, the law of its de- 
 velopment, its means of reaching upward to perfection. 
 
 Not long after this talk, the Boy had lighted upon 
 Sir William Hamilton's Logic, a book marking a turn- 
 ing point in his career; for when later he came to read 
 the greater English and German philosophers, he found 
 he already possessed a clear notion of where the key of 
 metaphysic lay. Thus Tom's field of thought widened 
 and deepened, enabling the lad and his friend May to 
 penetrate further into things as they tramped the hills 
 and valleys about Coventry. One brisk October day, as 
 they skirted the ridge of hills touched with the dull gold 
 of autumn, they fell into an argument as to> the nature 
 of the soul, and the difference between it and matter. 
 
 "You can't prove that matter is essentially — as to its 
 base — different from soul," Tom maintained stoutly. 
 
 "Why isn't soul the perspiration of matter?" May 
 threw out. 
 
 Tom laughed, his keen humor swiftly conscious of 
 his friend's wit; but it did not satisfy him. 
 
 "How can we know the absolute basis of matter, 
 George ?" 
 
 May's answer was to quote a favorite passage from 
 Carlyle, whom the lad greatly admired. 
 
 "The healthy understanding, we should say, is neither 
 the argumentative nor the Logical, but the Intuitive, for 
 the end of understanding is not to prove and find rea- 
 sons, but to know and believe." 
 
 The Boy shook his head. 
 
 "Give me the honest doubt, George. I must probe 
 until I have proven." 
 
The Boy of Evolution 191 
 
 "An honest searcher after truth, you will always be, 
 lad. Of that I am sure." v 
 
 So they had returned in the twilight to the quaint old 
 town, the faint odor of wood smoke in the air. 
 
 To Carlyle the Boy had turned first of all because 
 of Carlyle's intense hatred of shams, a kinship that went 
 deep with the lad all his life. This and Carlyle's trans- 
 lations from the German, roused in Tom an ardent de- 
 sire to know German for himself. So he had set to 
 work to teach himself, and it came to him as he looked 
 up now at the dark hillsides in the gathering dusk, how 
 he had gone out into the hayfields one summer, pre- 
 tending to make hay with one hand, while with the other 
 he held the key to the gate of a new knowledge, beyond 
 which lay the wide avenues of German philosophy and 
 science. 
 
 As the young surgeon leaned against the taffrail gazing 
 up at the snow-crested hills, they seemed indicative of 
 his life, a life isolated from those of his own age, from 
 the many who could neither understand nor sympathize 
 with his aims and endeavors in the cause of science. He 
 was to pay the penalty of greatness, loneliness of soul 
 to be accentuated in this relentless searcher after truth, 
 because he dared to voice what he believed, to fight for 
 the truth as he saw it, as it was revealed to him through 
 his mistress science. After his mother, his sister Lizzie 
 was of the few who had given him a rare and understand- 
 ing sympathy. It was she who had encouraged him in 
 his studies, had urged him, when later he was a student 
 at Sydenham College, to work for the Botanical prize 
 which he had won. Her belief in him and in his future 
 was a tower of strength to the Boy who was so early, 
 if vaguely, conscious of unrest, of great powers within 
 
192 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 him striving to find expression. It was his passionate 
 love, not only of truth, but his deep-seated desire to 
 know the truth, to probe into the very heart of life 
 and to discover of what it came and whither it was going, 
 to know, in short, the Heart of the Creator of all this 
 beauty, of all this wonderful unity and intricacy of 
 design to be found in nature, in the universe, that had 
 driven him on, and would drive him on so long as life 
 lasted. He would spend whole days in the woods, in 
 the fields, more often even, upon some isolated, rock- 
 bound coast, brooding over nature, the life of a tiny 
 flower, or some low form of animal life found among 
 the weed-strewn rocks, he totally absorbed as he un- 
 veiled bit by bit the inner mysteries of its being. So 
 unconsciously as a child he had begun to evolve his 
 theory of evolution, an idea that was to revolutionize 
 science, to reveal the meaning of life, — life as a struggle 
 through which it should reach upward toward perfec- 
 tion. An intensely religious nature, the Boy reverenced 
 nature teeming with myriad life, marveling ever at 
 its beauty and infinite variety, the perfection of the 
 tiniest creature's mechanism as with boundless patience 
 he dissected it and studied it beneath his microscope. 
 His energy was boundless, and even after lecture hours, 
 at the Charing Cross School of Medicine, he would stay 
 on, his recreation and amusement his microscope. Daily 
 the other boys playing at games in the Court caught 
 sight of Tom's dark head bending over his instrument, 
 one wit among them dubbing it "The Sign of the Head 
 and Microscope." 
 
 His passionate yearning to reach the very soul of truth 
 was the mainspring of the Boy's whole life, and yet 
 he would never stoop to satiate his thirst for it at the 
 price of insincerity or hypocrisy. For him, peace of 
 
The Boy of Evolution 193 
 
 irJnd could never be bought with compromise. His 
 was the high ideal holding up the dignity of science 
 as an instrument of truth; and though he never might 
 reach the heights of a faith realized, yet his questing 
 spirit would never fail, his yearning to grasp truth by 
 the hand never be stilled. To the end he would be a 
 seeker, even though he was never to find the grail for 
 which he sought. His belief was that the interpreta- 
 tion of the book of nature was not to be kept apart 
 from the ultimate problems of existence, in essence, 
 really, the eleventh century ideal that the material and 
 the spiritual must be fused, must rise up together without 
 discord, the one the complement of the other. No icono- 
 clast was Tom Huxley, but a builder, who strove to 
 fit the scientific stones of his fabric upon the rock- 
 hewn foundation of truth. 
 
 As he paced to and fro on the deck, the gentle lapping 
 of the water on the ship's sides the only sound stirring 
 the silence, Tom Huxley knew himself at a parting of 
 the ways, his whole future hanging upon his choice. 
 Five years he had spent in the East, years spent in re- 
 search work for the Admiralty, in result of no small value 
 to the scientific world. Now, his ship headed homeward, 
 he wondered bitterly if these precious years had been 
 wasted; for the papers he had forwarded he had not 
 heard from. On them his hopes were set. Were they 
 valueless? Had his youthful enthusiasm over-estimated 
 them? Belief in himself welled up to combat the dis- 
 couragement he felt. Deep in his heart he knew he had 
 chosen a flint-strewn road, a road steep and slow of 
 ascent. Should he turn back and choose the easier road 
 across the plain? The temptation was strong; for he 
 had left his heart in Sydney, in the keeping of one who 
 was to prove worthy of his great trust in her. Sup- 
 
194 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 pose he failed now to win recognition in his chosen field? 
 Should he return to Sydney and establish a practice 
 there, and so clip the wings of Pegasus? Could he be 
 true to the best that was in him by turning his back 
 on the steep road he had set himself to follow? These 
 questions flooded in upon him as he paced the deck 
 reviewing the years of his crowded, short life. Yet 
 he knew he could not turn back until the heights were 
 won. No life that did not give scope to his intellectual 
 passion could ever satisfy him, could ever bring him or 
 the girl he loved happiness. He must be true to himself, 
 to his ideals, even as he was to be an apostle of truth, 
 a pioneer bringing light into unblazed trails of scientific 
 research. The way would be a lonely way, a way beset 
 with thorns and with every foot a battle ground. The 
 truth as he conceived it, he would uphold with all the 
 flaming enthusiasm of the seeker to whom nothing but 
 attainment could bring peace. Unconsciously he squared 
 his shoulders, the glow in his dark eyes deepening. He 
 would win out no matter what the cost. The vision of 
 his ideal should be kept bright. Beyond the barren, 
 snow-clad hills lay a life of struggle, pain, misunder- 
 standing, ostracism, perhaps; but the joy of the quest 
 was his, the seeking for the realization of his dreams. 
 His course even as the ship's, was set, the North Star 
 a guide across the gray waste of waters, to this apostle 
 of truth, this Boy of Evolution, seeking to unravel the 
 mysteries of life. 
 
JAMES J. HILL— THE BOY PIONEER OF THE 
 NORTHWEST 
 
 THE biting wind of the short January day swept 
 across the ice-bound Levee of the small trading 
 settlement of St. Paul, hurrying on down the river dotted 
 with the transportation boats winter bound by the ice 
 clogging the upper Mississippi. Nor did the wind search- 
 ing the decks of one of these moored boats, spare the 
 lithe, erect figure of a young man tramping briskly up 
 and down, his strong face half hidden by the fur cap and 
 heavy coat collar he wore. Back and forth he paced, 
 his face ruddy from the cold, his keen blue eye glowing 
 as if the battle against the wind thrilled him. His spring- 
 ing step, his square shoulders bespoke virility, purpose, 
 latent power. Aft he paused a moment, gazing west- 
 ward toward the unknown country stretching for two 
 thousand miles to the Pacific, that gateway to the Orient 
 which since childhood had lured him, his boyhood's dream 
 carrying him beyond the confines of the Canadian farm 
 near Rockwood, a dream which as he stood there was 
 crystallizing into reality. 
 
 He had been in the little town of St. Paul seven 
 years, and now, after these years of toil, this Boy was 
 to begin to spread his wings, the embryo of his idea 
 growing and prospering even as the mustard seed. He 
 had served a hard noviciate, but one in which every 
 moment was to bear potently on his future. All this 
 winter he had lived in the river boat, working by day 
 as shipping clerk, by night guarding the moored packet 
 
 195 
 
196 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 boats, his life in the boat cabin, in a way one of final 
 preparation for the national work he was destined to per- 
 form. It had been a winter of deep reading, of deeper 
 contemplation, of detailed study not only of his business 
 in all its various branches, but of engineering, which 
 with his habitual thoroughness he was to master. As he 
 had studied the subject of transportation, it had been 
 impressed upon him, the stupendous necessity of it, his 
 vision grasping the ever growing need for enlarging trans- 
 portation facilities already along the rivers, and also 
 of establishing new fields of activity through an exten- 
 sion of the river traffic in the country lying beyond the 
 Mississippi. The Boy had lived much alone with his 
 thoughts; for, though he entered into all fun and sport 
 with the zest of a boy, his humor and nonsense bubbling 
 out like a clear spring, yet his friends could not under- 
 stand his tropical imagination as applied to practical 
 things. They failed to recognize the blood of the Celt 
 flowing in his veins, which reaches out toward greatness 
 as a flower the sun. To the Celt all things are possible 
 because his power of vision carries him across the 
 barrier of mountains into the radiant country of his 
 dreams. 
 
 In the growing dusk, .the lad's mind slipped back to 
 his childhood, those first years spent in the Canadian 
 Northwest, a rugged, pioneer's life of constant struggle 
 to wrest from nature the bare necessities of life, instilling 
 in the child the art of simple living, even as his sturdy, 
 high-minded parents taught him and' his brothers and 
 sisters that the best gift of life is to be at harmony with 
 one's daily life as one finds it, and the individual qualities 
 and limitations of those about him. Simplicity had been 
 the keynote of the Boy's home, a log cabin on the edge 
 of the wilderness, primitive really, yet home in its deep- 
 
The Boy Pioneer of the Northwest 197 
 
 est sense, a place where love dwelt unafraid, and whose 
 foundation stones were set in those sterling highminded 
 qualities of soul that inspire lofty ideals and create 
 the spiritual beauty of true holiness. So the Boy from 
 infancy had dwelt close to nature's heart, turning to the 
 forest as to a friend for strength, loving the flowers 
 and the animals dwelling therein. Strong of body the 
 lad grew, his nerves steady, his mind super-sensitive 
 to impression. Like the great oak shadowing the cabin 
 dooryard, though he knew it not, James was to overtop 
 his fellows, his power of vision flinging open to him the 
 wide spaces of the world beyond the mountain barrier 
 to the west. This love of nature came to the lad partly 
 as an inheritance, that Celtic love of the wild stretches 
 of heather-blown moorland, inherent in the Irish as 
 well as in the Scotch nature, the lad inheriting from 
 these sturdy parents of his, the joyousness of the Irish 
 Celt and the practical though no less poetic and beauty- 
 loving nature of the Scot; for this Boy's vision held 
 the breadth and beauty of the epic poet subtly blended 
 with the shrewd, far-sightedness of a mind intensely 
 practical, these two qualities marking the measure of his 
 greatness, A fervid imagination, an insight into the fu- 
 ture by intuitive perceptions so characteristic of the Celt, 
 was to give this boy of empire vision, form to his life 
 dream, coherence to his work. 
 
 From the first, because life so impressed itself upon 
 him, the Boy, James, recognized that fundamental fact 
 that life means struggle, and that by struggle alone 
 men, like all things in nature, grow upward toward per- 
 fection, fullest realization. To have won a vantage 
 ground from the wilderness as his parents had done, was 
 a victory of the soul as well as of the body, a victory 
 opening up wider possibilities for the Boy and his broth- 
 
198 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 ers and sisters ; fashioning, too, ideals of wider conquest. 
 So as the lad, in all unconsciously, absorbed this idea 
 of evolutionary growth as related fundamentally to life, 
 so in his own life, as his powers of mind and vision grew, 
 he reached out into the unknown beyond the forest, 
 reaching upward also toward the blue. 1 His vision wid- 
 ened, but it also deepened, his ideals to shine steadfast 
 throughout his life. This lad was to succeed, not by 
 sharp practice, but because of his far-reaching vision, 
 his grasp of future conditions preparing him to meet 
 them, forestalling them. The Boy of the Canadian 
 wilderness went out to meet the world taking his ideals 
 with him, ideals Tie was to carry through life, his vision 
 enlarging so that it encompassed not merely his own 
 future, but that of his adopted country's ; a vision build- 
 ing for the American people, for a nation's future. So 
 by service, he was to prove his worth as a citizen. 
 
 From his father, the Boy came by his industriousness, 
 that persistence of effort, that bull-doggedness that never 
 lets go, that subdues continents, that accomplishes what 
 it sets out to do. A rare though silent companionship 
 existed between the Boy and his father, his father pos- 
 sessing an inherent understanding and appreciation of 
 the lad's qualities of mind and heart. From his mother, 
 whom he most resembled, James came by his strong 
 character, his intense temperament. The Boy worshipped 
 this mother of his, his finely wrought nature envelop- 
 ing her always with a rare and exquisite tenderness, 
 that gentleness of strength inherent in deep, silent souls, 
 a tenderness that wrapped her round when the crushing 
 blow of his father's death came when the lad was but 
 fourteen; a blow bringing with it, not only sorrow and 
 responsibility to the Boy, but closing forever the first 
 chapter of his life, putting an end to his dreams of college 
 
The Boy Pioneer of the Northwest 199 
 
 and a professional career, or even a continuation of his 
 school days at Rockwood Academy which had been, per- 
 haps, the most potent influence in his life as they were 
 also the happiest days of his boyhood. His father had 
 sought more than the limited elementary education of the 
 neighborhood for this eldest boy of his, recognizing as 
 he did James' unusual qualities of mind, his quick per- 
 ception, his swift absorption of elementary knowledge, 
 his insatiable thirst for more. A thoroughly normal 
 boy, bright, active, ready for sport, yet books held him 
 spell-bound, this passion for reading to be characteristic 
 of him all his life. Playing with some lads at school 
 one day, James lost his right eye, an arrow piercing 
 it, putting an end to his dream of being- a doctor; but 
 his iron will overcame this handicap, his career to be 
 unmarred by the loss of his eye. 
 
 At five, James had started school, and the young man 
 leaning against the taffrail looking westward, smiled 
 as he recalled his daily tramp of five miles each day 
 through the bush as he went to and from school, a feat 
 not much thought of by those sturdy pioneers, these first 
 school days setting their mark upon the child ; for it was 
 then that the Boy first came under that gentle, benign 
 Quaker influence that was to make its indelible impress 
 upon the child, and so on the man to be. The settle- 
 ment was largely comprised of Friends, and from the 
 first school and the splendid old Quaker, John Harris, 
 the schoolmaster, the Boy at eleven had gone to Rock- 
 wood Academy, a private school started by a Quaker, 
 William Wetherald by name, a man of parts who gave 
 to this Boy of promise the best that was in him, his 
 intuitive understanding awakening the mind of the lad. 
 Until his father's death some three years later, it was the 
 Boy's privilege to be under this man's influence, a forma.- 
 
200 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 tive period in the Boy's life, bearing vital consequences 
 for the future ; for with the lad's awakening had dawned 
 a fixity of intellectual purpose, that under his beloved 
 teacher's rare guidance was to develop and mature. Men- 
 tal discipline rather than mental craftsmanship was the 
 ideal William Wetherald inculcated in the Boy, pre- 
 paring him thus, when he came at grips with life in the 
 great world outside, to fasten upon this new material, 
 the Boy's mind taking all that these years had given 
 him of precision and of power, and thus remoulding it 
 into the forms his mind conceived. The magic touch 
 of character on character was potent, and the noble ex- 
 ample of plain living and high thinking, inculcated in 
 the Boy from birth, was deepened and enriched by his 
 intimate contact with his teacher to whom he gave a 
 deep and lasting devotion, their friendship forged with 
 links no separation could lessen. 
 
 In his love of reading the Boy was stimulated and 
 encouraged by this rare friend of his, who opened to 
 him the world's best literature. Shakespeare, Burns, the 
 dictionary and the Bible were his bookshelf, developing 
 his love of beauty in things pertaining to nature and 
 the spirit, his slim library to be augmented by a Life 
 of Napoleon which made a deep impress upon the lad. 
 Napoleon's indomitable will gripped him; for it touched 
 a half-formed idea of his own, that what a man made 
 up his mind to do was already half done. This be- 
 came the watchword of the man. So he accomplished 
 the great things destiny held for him, the light and 
 shade of his character brought out by the patience, 
 insight and sympathy of his teacher who, with an ar- 
 tist's knowledge, knew how to mould and fashion the 
 lad's mind and character. 
 
 To these five books, the Boy gradually added a few 
 
The Boy Pioneer of the Northwest 201 
 
 others, Plutarch, Lalla Rookh and Byron, firing his imag- 
 ination to white heat, setting him dreaming of the Orient, 
 with India his Mecca. His mind upon the roadway he 
 had come, the young man pacing the deck of the river 
 boat traced minutely the four years following his father's 
 death and their removal to Guelph, years spent in the 
 irksome confines of a village store, yet years in which 
 the Boy had by hard and constant tilling made profitable 
 in their rich yield; for his evenings and Sundays were 
 his own, and these he spent in reading and study, with 
 ever the inspiration of his friend, his beloved teacher, 
 to guide and help him over the rough places, the dron- 
 ing drudgery of unremitting toil. The lad in the coun- 
 try store, dreamed not only of the romantic East in the 
 abstract, but he dreamed of it constructively, of opening 
 up the country by means of transportation on the rivers, 
 the Ganges and the Brahmapootra to become the road- 
 ways to the world of commerce beyond India's frontiers. 
 In this rainbow dream of his, the Boy saw dimly the 
 benefit it would be to India by opening it up to the world's 
 marts of trade. His vision, even as a Boy reached out, 
 out beyond stultifying self-interest, this boyhood's dream 
 to be finally realized upon the Mississippi and in the 
 vast Northwest. Here in St. Paul already commercial 
 activity centered about the Levee, boats being practically 
 the only means of transportation. 
 
 When at Rockwood Academy, James had known two 
 boys from the Red River Settlement. So when he started 
 on his quest of the East, and had failed to ship as a 
 sailor from an Atlantic seaboard, the Boy came to St. 
 Paul seven years before with the idea of making his 
 way to the Pacific by way of the Red River Settlement, 
 so reaching the far East by going west. He had arrived 
 in St. Paul sixteen days too late to join the last brigade 
 
202 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 of the season going to Red River, and he was obliged 
 to wait over the winter before another expedition would 
 start. So had begun his seven years apprenticeship in 
 St. Paul. In the west, not in the old world East, destiny 
 thus decided this Boy of the Canadian border should 
 cast his lot; yet in the years to come his ships would 
 ride in the harbors of Cathay, even though this Boy 
 of Destiny's life was to be spent largely in the North- 
 west wherein his vision of empire was to be born and 
 developed into national proportions. Romance played 
 about the prosaic, ramshackled town rising on high bluffs 
 above the Mississippi; for Fremont and Nicollet had 
 that year of 1856 completed their explorations of the 
 Upper Mississippi country, firing the imagination of the 
 Boy, his imagination fired still further by Major 1 1. 
 Stevens, then governor of the territory of Washington, 
 Major Stevens declaring that the seeming wilderness ly- 
 ing between St. Paul and the Pacific was no unconquer- 
 able wilderness despite the fierce Indian tribes over- 
 running it. It was all susceptible of occupancy. Again, 
 the enthusiasm of Lord Selkirk, which had planted the 
 first outpost for agricultural and commercial conquest 
 of the interior of the continent in the Northwest be- 
 yond the Red River, opened a gateway through which 
 the Boy's embryo visions were entering. His intensely 
 practical mind, bright with vision, gripped what came 
 nearest to him, his wonderful memory enabling him to 
 utilize to the full his wide field of knowledge. In those 
 seven years of apprenticeship which he had served, he 
 had studied the country about him, going out often far 
 afield in vacation-time, to outlying settlements by way 
 of rudely-blazed trails, his mind ever alert to that coun- 
 try's possibilities for cultivation and transportation. So 
 with everything. He knew the shipping business in all 
 
The Boy Pioneer of the Northwest 203 
 
 its details. More than that, he did not measure to- 
 morrow's needs by to-day's. He perceived the future 
 invisible to others, and in that light he was to set to work. 
 Standing upon the deck looking out across the snow-clad 
 wastes of that land stretching endlessly westward, he 
 visioned the need of conquering its wildness, of taming 
 the fierce roving Indian bands. The country was grow- 
 ing, and the ever increasing population must push west- 
 ward to till the black virgin soil, to fell the forests 
 and to lay bare the richness of the as yet undiscovered 
 mineral wealth. To meet this, boat transportation would 
 be inadequate. Railroads must be developed and pushed 
 westward ahead of the influx of people. Then out of 
 his restless, creative mind, there rose that wider vision 
 which was to mark the measure of his greatness, the 
 building of model towns along his railroads to which 
 to give impetus to this westward migration. Looking 
 across those white-clad plains, the gray January day 
 drawing to a close, the great Northwest called to James 
 Hill as never before. His soul was stirred to its depths. 
 He saw the railroad pushing its way through these 
 wastes, leaving embryo farms and homesteads by the 
 railside; he saw how, by introducing live stock — cattle 
 and hogs — into the vast bunch grass plains stretching 
 out on every side, cattle ranges would be stocked with the 
 best blooded stock obtainable ; he saw, as in a vision, his 
 trains, demonstration trains they would be called later, 
 to teach these pioneers of the new land how to get more 
 wheat per acre out of their crops, and how to market 
 their grain, he to furnish the elevators to house it ; he saw 
 towns rising out of the wilderness, towns that he was 
 to build that a nation might grow and expand and become 
 great. His dream of empire was not to exploit himself, 
 nor to accrue autocratic power, but to spend himself 
 
204 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 for the people of the country of his adoption ; his service 
 the high water mark of his citizenship. His greatness 
 was to be other than the mere power of accumulating 
 money. The ideal of his boyhood was to carry him 
 through life. His contact with the world was to enlarge 
 his vision, rather than to dwarf it. His sense of values 
 was to be sharpened not dulled nor swept away even as 
 his love of art, of beauty was to be deepened, the Celt in 
 him demanding that his passion for color and beauty of 
 form should be satisfied. 
 
 So this Boy pioneer of the Northwest was to reach the 
 far East through the gateway of the great Northwest, 
 his dream of his ships touching in Eastern ports to be 
 realized with the completion of his railroad at Puget 
 Sound, — a fleet of steamers that would carry the com- 
 merce of the United States into China and Japan, extend- 
 ing and developing thus further her commercial activities. 
 Because he was to think in billions when men still thought 
 in millions, he would be called visionary ; but he perceived 
 a future invisible to those of lesser genius, smaller minds, 
 those less sensitized than the Scotch-Irish Celt, whose 
 vision was to people a wilderness, whose genius was to 
 make that vision a reality. 
 
PATER— THE BOY LOVER OF MYSTIC BEAUTY 
 
 A KEEN February wind sweeping in from the East 
 Coast scurried the snow flakes across Green Court, 
 that echoed to the shouts of excited King's boys battling 
 to drive out the Canterbury boys beyond the weathered 
 gateway, marking the precincts of the cathedral school. 
 Within the shadow of the Norman Staircase, the Boy, 
 Walter Pater, stood looking down upon the scene, a 
 desolate little figure, unprepossessing, unless you caught 
 the glow in his deep-set eyes, bespeaking the artist, 
 the poet's soul burning within. Already a heavy down 
 outlined his chin and lip, giving him a prematurely old 
 appearance; and the slight curve in his back, the Pater 
 Poke they called it at home, debarred him from entering 
 into the sports in which other boys delight. He wrapped 
 his gown more tightly about him as if to shut out the 
 wind, his thin, plain face white and desolate, as he fol- 
 lowed the fortunes of the battle; or, as was more often 
 the case, his eyes wandered across Green Court to the 
 cathedral upon which he was never tired of gazing. 
 
 Green Court lay mantled in snow, its shimmering white- 
 ness set against a jumble of gray walls and buttresses, of 
 gray bare-limed trees and pinnacled towers reaching up 
 into a gray, cloud-hung sky. Standing aloof, above the 
 battle, the lad's eye caught the splash of white against 
 the gray, noting, too, the soft outlines of the cathedral 
 he loved so passionately as it rose delicately penciled 
 against the lp^den winter sky, revealed through a gray 
 mist of oViicious, mysterious beauty gripping his very 
 / 205 
 
206 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 soul. Everything spoke in terms of beauty to this sensi- 
 tive Boy whose soul quivered as vibrant as a flower to 
 the wind, yet whose physical appearance bespoke the very 
 ugliness he abhorred. His low-bridged nose, heavy jaw 
 and square-cut chin together with a curious malformation 
 of the mouth, seemed a strange setting for his Greek, 
 beauty-loving soul ; for the Boy looked out upon a Greek 
 world, his world of the imagination, peopled with the 
 simple purity of form and beauty essentially Greek, that 
 beauty which he himself lacked and craved, even as his 
 physical weakness made hin^ worship strength and ath- 
 letic prowess in his comrades. The unconscious beauty 
 of line and movement the artist in the lad was quick to 
 catch as he watched the boys below him struggling for 
 mastery, holding his interest. He shrank from close 
 physical contact with his fellows, that rough and tumble 
 bear play that is the very breath of life to most boys. 
 Yet he craved companionship, that intellectual compan- 
 ionship that seeks the heights together, building daringly 
 as those mighty architects of old conceived and fashioned 
 the great cathedral across Green Court flinging its beauty 
 to the gray.February sky. 
 
 Atmosphere was a potent thing with the Boy, and 
 Walter had become saturated with the all-pervading at- 
 mosphere of the cathedral, its traditions and its memories, 
 its aspirations and its ideals having become part of his 
 bone and fibre. To him, the cathedral was a symbol not 
 merely of the great age that fashioned it, but of the 
 heights to which the human soul in any age might aspire. 
 It had set the high water mark of human achievement, 
 that no man might dare fall short of. Its potent influ- 
 ence pervaded the precincts reaching even to the town 
 itself with its narrow, winding streets bordered by tim- 
 bered houses, Canterbury to the Boy always "a leaf 
 
The Boy Lover of Mystic Beauty 207 
 
 torn from an illuminated missal." It lent a certain 
 spiritual softness to life, a warm, illumined beauty, a 
 colored radiance permeating it, suggestive of a light 
 shining through things not merely on them as in the, 
 dazzling whiteness of Greek art. In this atmosphere in 
 which Walter was steeped, a certain ascetic quality in 
 his way of life was evident, as if the old monastic influ- 
 ence still lingered about the mouldering stones of the 
 Almonry Chapel with its heavy old desks carven now 
 by the countless generations of boys who had passed 
 through the school, and were now forgotten save on the 
 dust-dimmed records where their names could still be 
 traced. This asceticism in the lad was subtly blended 
 with a sensitive aesthetic quality, developing in him love 
 of the mystic, his mysticism suggestive of St. Francis of 
 Assisi or of St. Bernard of Cluny, dreamers of beauty 
 in the heart of their monastic surroundings, their souls 
 on fire with the passion of the mystic, seers piercing to 
 the very soul of life, interpreting its hidden beauties. 
 It was this sense of detachment one felt in the lad, an 
 aloofness setting him apart, making him seek solitude, his 
 chief delight to wander alone about the precincts. Thus 
 he grew to intimate knowledge of each nook and corner, 
 — the ancient, vine-clad arches of the infirmary of mon- 
 astic days, the Dark Entry where Nell Cook of the 
 Ingoldby "Legends" "with ashen face stalks on Friday 
 nights ;" Green Court, shadowed by flowering limes and 
 hedged in on the northern side by the Deanery, on the 
 western end by the Norman Staircase; and beyond 
 through the chapel arches, Mint Yard where stood the 
 house of the Head Master, the revered reverend George 
 Wallace, Mint Yard, however, more especially remem- 
 bered for the corner where stood Mrs. Norton's sweets 
 stall, Mrs. Norton the wife of old Norton the school 
 
208 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 factotum. Above all, the Boy loved the hushed quiet 
 of the cloisters, their crumbling Gothic beauty still rich 
 in heraldries, setting them apart as a place of special 
 sanctity, the spot where in the cloister garth the monks 
 lay sleeping within the shadow of the cathedral they 
 loved and chiseled until the gray blocks of stone on 
 which they wrought, became living monuments, setting 
 the seal of their achievement. It was here the lad 
 slipped away most often to dream, picturing, perhaps, the 
 quiet rudely broken in upon by Becket's murderers, those 
 knights led by their king battering down the door lead- 
 ing from the cloisters into the cathedral where Becket 
 met his martyrdom so bravely. Or, he would sit where 
 he could gaze up at the pinnacled Bell Harry Tower, its 
 stately magnificence connoting to the Boy the four- 
 squared integrity, the wide-eyed aspiration and democracy 
 of England, that gift of the Middle Ages to the cen- 
 turies coming after ; for the monastic life, of which in a 
 sense this King's schoolboy was a part, breathed a 
 spirit of democracy, that aim of a veritable community of 
 which Plato speaks, in which the good of the whole 
 was the ideal, the individual gain attained through the 
 general welfare. Then, too, the spirit of patience to 
 attain was instilled within these gray walls, that spirit 
 imbued by the very architecture itself. The daring height 
 coupled with an equally daring severity in the unending 
 upward lines, the free spring and grace of the Gothic 
 arches, the daring boldness of the sculpturing, the least 
 conspicuous figure as finely wrought as that plainest to 
 view, touched the deep artist vein in the Boy's nature, 
 that French fineness that was to be characteristic of him 
 always, that artist yearning for perfection, counting 
 no labor too arduous to attempt if only the perfection 
 was attained. Commercialism held no part in the Boy's 
 
The Boy Lover of Mystic Beauty 209 
 
 outlook on life. For him there were nobler aims and 
 obligations in life than selling one's soul for money. This 
 artist's love of perfection, came to him partly an inherit- 
 ance from his Flemish artist ancestor, Jean Baptiste 
 Pater, the pupil and friend of that prince of court paint- 
 ers, Watteau, a friendship to be immortalized by this 
 King's boy Walter Horatio. The careful neatness of this 
 artist ancestor, cropped out again in this Kentish lad, 
 coupled with a wilfulness and obstinacy, characteristics 
 in curious contrast to the sweetness and gentleness so 
 dominant a feature in the lad's nature. Yet, despite the 
 Dutch background of his heritage, its sturdiness and its 
 homely beauty, the Boy had been moulded and steeped 
 in the atmosphere of England, its peculiar beauty and its 
 noble traditions, his English heritage the predominant 
 force in his life; and of it he was to give expression, 
 revealing the very essence of England redolent with 
 blossoming hedgerows and of harvest, its haze-hung fields 
 caught in the mystic glow of summer sun, possessed of a 
 peace and beauty all its own. 
 
 On this bleak February afternoon, the Boy shivered 
 more from utter loneliness than from cold. The sudden 
 death of his mother whom he worshipped, and from 
 whom he had parted in petulance, filled him with re- 
 morse. His father, who had died when Walter was 
 only five, had been cold and severe ; but to his widowed 
 mother he had given that passionate devotion of which 
 so sensitive and shy a nature could give but rarely. As 
 if by a sudden impulse, the lad gathered his gown about 
 him, slipping across Green Court to seek sanctuary in 
 the hushed beauty of the cathedral, there to think things 
 out, and to re-adjust himself as best he could to his 
 loss. He was early for the evening service, he knew, a 
 time he loved, for he took great joy in singing in the 
 
210 A Book/ of Boyhoods 
 
 cathedral choir ; but he was glad to have the hour alone 
 with his friend the cathedral, to him a living personality, 
 its brooding quiet potent with the wisdom of the cen- 
 turies, uplifting in its noble traditions, its fidelity to the 
 faith which daily it has proclaimed since the coming of 
 St. Augustine and his monks, — an element reflected in 
 the school's esprit de corps, and so reacting upon him 
 likewise. 
 
 Sitting there in the choir, Walter's eyes sought instinc- 
 tively the Angel Steeple, the lantern shedding, on sum- 
 mer days, a soft effulgent radiance, touching to life the 
 gray stone, giving that sense of light and spacelessness, 
 the spiritual quality of mystic beauty gripping the lad pro- 
 foundly. Sitting there, his mind swept back to the dimly- 
 remembered Tudor house at Weston Underwood and 
 Olney, with its tiled roof and heavily mullioned windows 
 where he had been born. Etched on his memory was 
 the gateway with its massive piers surmounted by stone 
 balls, this moss-grown relic of a by-gone age shadowed 
 by whispering beeches and swaying alders through which 
 he passed for the last time after the death of his father 
 when the family had moved to Chase-Side, Enfield. The 
 gateway had stood at the head of a narrow lane which 
 joined the village street close to the socket of the ancient 
 wayside cross, these bits so eloquent of Middle Age, 
 making their impress on the child even at five; to be 
 supplemented later by his memories of Enfield, the King 
 James and Tinker Inn and the market cross, the old 
 mansion with its hoary relics of King John, shadowed 
 by immemorial cedars. Enfield stood out in the Boy's 
 mind primarily, as the abode of Charles Lamb and of 
 Keats who came thither to school for several terms, 
 both essayist and poet to have their part in the moulding 
 of the lad even as the garden, odorous of wall flowers 
 
The Boy Lover of Mystic Beauty 211 
 
 and sweet peas, permeated his soul with their perfume, 
 filling him with a longing to give in like measure of those 
 things of the spirit that alone give forth the brightness 
 and beauty of the sun. The house acted to "his wander- 
 ing soul as in second degree its body and tabernacle," all 
 these things playing all unconsciously upon the Boy's na- 
 ture as he absorbed the beauty all about him, later to give 
 out again enriched an hundred fold. 
 
 From his Aunt Bessie, whom next to his mother he 
 loved devotedly, he learned much of his ancestral back- 
 ground, of the Flemish Pater who came so long ago to 
 ply his lacemaking in England. Another of his childhood 
 memories was Fishall Hall, the home of his cousin and 
 godmother, a Georgian square of brick, yet possessed, 
 withal, of a comely whiteness, appealing to the lad in 
 whom color and sensibility to suffering were such marked 
 characteristics. From infancy he had had a passion for 
 white, a white cat being always an essential part of the 
 Pater household. The long drive bordered with shrubs 
 and pampas grass, the paths by alders and wide-spreading 
 yews, the swans swimming about the old fish pond of 
 monastic days, the trellised walk, the mulberry tree 
 burdened in summer with luscious fruit, the greenery, 
 all hung vividly in his memory, potent factors in the 
 moulding of the child, sensitizing him to beauty, not only 
 in nature, but in all things pertaining to a noble tradition ; 
 instilling in him also, the value of culture. 
 
 Two years had passed since his mother and his Aunt 
 Bessie had moved from Chase-Side to Harbledown 
 Place that he might enter King's School as a day scholar, 
 a day proving to be a turning point in his career, flinging 
 him, as it did, not only into a world of beauty and splen- 
 did traditions, but also into a community where he must 
 learn to hold his own, winning for himself a place among 
 
212 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 his schoolmates. Hating sports in the actual and the 
 rough and tumble fights so inevitable a part of the school 
 term, the Boy had shrunk at first within himself. His 
 timidity made him the butt of the boys, and his loathing 
 for snakes had caused his brother William, egged on by 
 the other boys, to wind a viper around the door knob 
 of his cubicle, terrifying the lad. Yet Walter's keen 
 sense of humor in the end had won them; for he en- 
 joyed their antics if he did not always participate in 
 them. There were two Newfoundland dogs belonging 
 to the school, named by the boys Nep and Tip. They 
 taught the dogs to pull up the posts set in Green Court 
 to protect the grass, and their delight was to set the dogs 
 to work and then watch for old Norton to turn the cor- 
 ner. Old Norton was not spry enough for the dogs, 
 and the dogs seemed to enter into the game with the 
 spirit of the boys. 
 
 There was another tradition in the school spurring 
 the boys to like feats of daring. As was often the case, 
 repair work necessitating scaffolding about the cathedral 
 was being done, and on one of the occasions when there 
 had been scaffolding on the Bell Harry Tower, a boy, 
 who in passing had given the windlass rope a tug, was 
 drawn up to the top by the mason who thought it was 
 a signal from below to draw up material. So frightened 
 was the man when he saw a boy appear over the top 
 that he let him down again instead of rescuing him then 
 and there. The boy arrived safely at the bottom, how- 
 ever, his terror soon forgotten in the halo of heroism 
 that was soon encircling him. 
 
 The history of the school, Walter knew by heart, 
 loving to dwell on its founding in the seventh century 
 when Kent was still a kingdom and St. Augustine and 
 his monks the latest sensation. To Dean Stanley, per- 
 
The Boy Lover of Mystic Beauty 213 
 
 haps, more than to any other, this knowledge of the cathe- 
 dral's history was due, the Dean making real to the Boy 
 the coming of Augustine, the martyrdom of Becket 
 and the passing of the Black Prince, those characters 
 so intimately associated with the place; dwelling espe- 
 cially on the Black Prince whose romantic figure was 
 sure to catch the imagination of the lad. There was the 
 well at Harbledown where the Black Prince had paused 
 to drink and to water his horse. Above all, there was the 
 Warrior's Chapel in the cathedral where with great pomp 
 and ceremony the Black Prince had been laid to rest in 
 a beautifully carved tomb above which still hung his 
 shirt of mail and shield blazoned with the lilies of France. 
 A living personality the Black Prince became to the 
 Boy, the ideal of chivalry and knightly prowess that he 
 worshipped. Love of the military life was ingrained in 
 the lad, as was his longing for the strength and agility 
 needed for athletics, a longing for those things of which 
 his physical weakness deprived him. This seeming in- 
 consistency in the Boy, his intense love for the military 
 life and for athletics, from which he at the same time 
 instinctively shrank, was but a part, really, of his pas- 
 sionate love of beauty, especially perfection of form, 
 abhorrence of the ugly; for the lad suffered keenly be- 
 cause of his physical ugliness, taking refuge in his world 
 of imagination, where only the beautiful, the strong, the 
 true had place. Nor was King's School wanting in its 
 military traditions, its boys having gone out, from time to 
 time, to give their lives in their country's service, a 
 tattered flag or two the symbol and the sign of their su- 
 preme sacrifice. 
 
 It was the Boy's pensive seriousness that attracted 
 Keble to him ; and to this gentle, noble soul Walter, with 
 shy, boyish ardor, gave a deep love and admiration. 
 
214 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 One of the red letter days of his vacation time was a 
 visit to Keble at Hursley, their talks and walks along 
 the Norman moat of the adjoining place, leaving an in- 
 delible impress upon the lad. The Head Master, too, 
 the Boy loved and reverenced, his two maxims being 
 Walter's guideposts to attainment always. The first 
 was, "Be content with a humble place at first, but spare 
 no exertion to fit yourself for a higher." The second 
 carried on the thought, or perhaps, supplemented it. "Re- 
 gard your position in life as a revelation from God Who 
 wills you to perform the duty assigned to it with a cheer- 
 ful obedience." 
 
 The great event of Walter's school days, the one most 
 far-reaching in its effects, was the forming of the Trium- 
 virate between himself and two other King's boys, Henry 
 Dombrain and John Ranier McQueen, known as Rene. 
 The friendship with these two boys was the open sesame 
 of a new life for Walter, a life less cramped, enriched 
 by the interchange of thoughts and ideas, the play of 
 varying qualities of imaginations. Dombrain was the 
 son of a hop grower, who, of Huguenot descent, had 
 come to England in an open boat. Henry's was a 
 saturnine disposition, very foreign to the gay humor 
 and quaint seriousness of Walter, or the sunny sweetness 
 of Rene, grandson of the original Weir of Hermiston 
 Stevenson was later to immortalize. Rene, in a sense, 
 brought with him the military tradition, his father being a 
 colonel of Hussars, and to Walter the ideal soldier he in 
 his dreams would be. Rene was a quiet, solitary boy, 
 of great independence of thought and action, possessing 
 also a vivid imagination, his illustrated "Imaginative 
 Countries" inspiring Walter in after years to write in a 
 sense a companion volume, in his "Imaginary Portraits." 
 That delicacy of imaginative weaving of Greek white- 
 
The Boy Lover of Mystic Beauty 215 
 
 ness shot with color, palpitating with life was revealed 
 in the Boy Walter, not yet sixteen, a delicacy belonging 
 to the Kentish countryside and absorbed, doubtless, on 
 the long tramps and exploring expeditions, "skirmishings" 
 as Walter with his military ardor called them, indulged 
 in by these three lads in the long summer days. Blean 
 Woods, the remains of an ancient forest between Canter- 
 bury and Faversham, green-gold vested in May, and Big- 
 berry Wood with its rude relics of an old British Camp, 
 drew them by spring magic and the dust-dimmed mem- 
 ories clustered about the past, — a spot to cast its spell 
 upon their virile imaginations. Past the oast houses they 
 wandered on their way to Bigberry Wood as the haw- 
 thorn hedges and the oak shaws were burgeoning, and 
 the fields were carpeted with anemones, wild hyacinths 
 and yellow archangel, the air redolent of spring, the 
 nightingale singing in the blue dusk of the May night 
 as they sauntered homewards. In June when the wild 
 roses shed their fragrance, there mingled with it the 
 scent of hay catching at their throats, catching in the 
 Boy's throat now as he sat in the stillness of the choir, 
 so vividly memory swept in upon him like a tide ; mem- 
 ories, too, of the marshes in autumn twilight within scent 
 and sight of the sea, the tang of the sea wind mingling 
 with wood fires whose smoke curled up into the dusking 
 sky. 
 
 On these expeditions, Dombrain would relate with 
 glowing eyes the story of Mad Tom, he of the coal 
 black beard who roamed the country side scattering 
 terror when in his wild moods; or, again, of the dar- 
 ing Canterbury goldsmith of the Reform Bill days 
 stoning Archbishop Howley, who crowned Queen Vic- 
 toria. Walter's eyes gleamed, reveling in these tales of 
 horror; for a curious love of horrors veined his na- 
 
216 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 ture, a nature so sensitive to suffering, so singularly 
 sweet and gentle. Rene, as they lay stretched out under 
 the sunflecked trees, would tell of the countries into 
 which his fancy had led him, picturing for them out of 
 his glowing imagination these countries of his dreams, 
 weaving, often, about the British Camp or some crum- 
 bling wall, the story of its building, this spot where they 
 were, a country as remote as the Kentish Kingdom of 
 olden time. 
 
 Walter's romance-loving mind of a more mystic type, 
 etched for them word pictures of Chaucer and his Pil- 
 grims the motley throngs wending their way to Canter- 
 bury coming suddenly in sight of the giant tower of the 
 Cathedral, marking the goal they were seeking. Or, 
 he would weave them a story of some holy virgin or 
 emaciated saint their faces and hollow eyes "as if cut 
 out of yellow ivory." At another time he would trace 
 the picture of a priest in flowered amice and stole, caught 
 up in a cloud of incense, through which the sun filtering 
 in through the stained glass window, turned to mystic 
 radiance, this unearthly beauty that which gripped the 
 Boy most deeply; or again, of resplendent but noseless 
 and fingerless abbots, kneeling in dim churches, their 
 palms pressed in prayer, their alabaster figures turned 
 to living flesh and blood to the Boy, his world of the 
 imagination a world alive and real to him, the well- 
 spring of the riches he was to give out again in the years 
 to come. 
 
 Then, as the boys went home together in the mellowing 
 light, it was the first sight of the cathedral town that 
 gripped them as the Pilgrims of old, with its beauty, 
 the gray old town, dominated by the cathedral whose 
 daring fingers reached upward as if seeking still those 
 heights to which throughout the centuries it has aspired. 
 
The Boy Lover of Mystic Beauty 217 
 
 A silver-toned bell striking the quarter roused the Boy. 
 It was time for service, and he hurried away to make 
 ready; but as he stood once more among the white- 
 robed choristers, he saw again as on Ascension and 
 School Feast Day, the long procession, the fifty King's 
 Scholars, the Commoners, the masters in their university 
 robes, coming across Green Court and following the 
 clergy and the choir into the cool cathedral, an endless 
 procession coming down the centuries, even to-day and in 
 the future, and of which he was forever an integral part, 
 King's School, lichened, hoary gray, his gateway to the 
 great world outside where his dreams would be resolved 
 into the facts of life, that world into which he would 
 carry with him the ideals and traditions of which he was 
 the heir, the great cathedral to be his well-spring of 
 inspiration even as he was to give back with the fulness 
 of his powers the beauty and the richness that had been 
 lavished upon him, he who was the lover of mystic 
 beauty, who, because of his power of vision, had pierced 
 the veil, seeing into the soul of things. 
 
RODIN— THE BOY OF COSMIC SYMBOLISM 
 
 IT was closing hour at the Petite Ecole des Arts 
 Decoratifs, and the students poured out noisily into 
 the old rue de Medecine, its time-scarred grayness soft 
 and mellow in the June twilight. Among that throng of 
 black-smocked boys, one slipped silently away, his mas- 
 sive torso and enormous head, singling him out among 
 his fellow students. His head was bare, the rough brush 
 of hair framing a brow rugged, suggestive of power, of 
 the thinker, as did the keen, gray-blue eyes, aglow now 
 with an inward fire. His strong, purposeful hands were 
 stained with the clay which he had handled for the first 
 time that evening. His swift, rolling stride betrayed a 
 secret exaltation, as if he had at last found his medium of 
 expression in the wet clinging clay. Almost rudely he 
 cast off two boys who would have accompanied him home, 
 his excuse being that he had an errand before returning 
 to the rue de l'Arbalete, the mediaeval, hilly street on the 
 slopes of the Montaigne Sainte Genevieve where he had 
 been born, and where he had lived his short life, except 
 for the two years he had spent with his uncle at Beauvais, 
 a life shadowed throughout by the lofty beauty and in- 
 spiration of two mighty cathedrals, Notre-Dame, heart 
 of the Isle de France, and St. Pierre-de-Beauvais ; two 
 mighty influences moulding all silently this Boy, Auguste 
 Rodin, the imprint of their strength and rugged beauty to 
 be found in the masterpieces he was destined to mould 
 and fashion out of his great soul. 
 It was always to the river he came in his great moments 
 
 ?i8 
 
The Boy of Cosmic Symbolism 219 
 
 and in his hour of need, this river Seine born among the 
 hills of France and winding its way through the heart of 
 Paris to the sea, the great artery through which pulsed 
 the very life blood of France itself. So to-night Auguste 
 sought the Petit Pont, leaning upon its weathered stone 
 parapet, and gazing across at Notre-Dame, the sun lin- 
 gering still upon its sculptured pinnacles, a roseate glow 
 reflectant in the mirrored waters of the slow-moving 
 Seine. As in a dream the Boy watched the night life of 
 Paris drift past him, people flitting to and fro from 
 the Boul' Miche to the Cite, to the gay boulevards, past 
 the rose-scented Luxemburg Gardens where brooded the 
 spirit of mediaeval France, or melting into the shadows 
 along the quays where memories hung like fine strands 
 of gossamer webs caught by the sun's ray. This mani- 
 fold life of Paris of which he was an integral part, 
 gripped the Boy as never before, soaking deep into his 
 soul, Paris of an infinitude of moods, — gay as the laugh- 
 ing faun, yet of clear vision, tragic, yet possessed of the 
 deep serenity of soul of one who has touched unfathomed 
 blackness, yet has risen above it, strong, facing life un- 
 afraid; the very light and shade enhancing her beauty, 
 mellowing it, leaving clear-cut the fantasy and the beauty 
 of each age, now so subtly blended, revealing the harmony 
 and the richness in infinite variety. 
 
 To-night in this June of 1855, it was the Norman in the 
 lad rose uppermost, the inheritance from his Norman 
 father, his Norman nature overflowing with life and a 
 need, passionate in its demand for expression, to steep 
 his soul in beauty, producing an exaltation of the senses 
 which was to resolve itself in an art exquisite in taste, 
 rugged, Godlike in the boldness of its conception and exe- 
 cution ; for the lad was to deal in terms of the cosmic, and 
 by symbolism to lay bare a mood with all the subtle 
 
220 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 beauty and relentless truth of the psychologist, the scien- 
 tific analyst. Drenching his soul in beauty, this Boy, sen- 
 sitized, his imagination smouldering into flame, was to 
 give forth again out of the richness of his manifold 
 nature. As his power of expression grew and was 
 unique in its concrete form, so was the lad to have need 
 of those elements within him, his heritage from his Lor- 
 rainer mother, the indomitable courage and tenacity of 
 the fighter who will never let go until he has achieved, 
 triumphed over crass criticism and opposition, those ob- 
 stacles besetting the pathway of all great artists, all men 
 of vision. It was no rose-strewn pathway the lad was to 
 follow, though at its end lay the veiled glory of the artist 
 who has been true to his inner vision, who has spoken 
 even as the prophet, whose work is of that immortal 
 quality defying men's praise or blame. When one has 
 to fight, there is no time to dream, is the hallmark of 
 Lorraine, that age-worn battle ground between Gaul and 
 Teuton. Yet how one fights depends upon the dreamer's 
 power of vision. It is because this fighting spirit of 
 Lorraine is fused with vision, that it is unconquerable. 
 So with the shock-headed Boy standing upon the century- 
 scarred Petit Pont dreaming great dreams and seeing 
 splendid visions ! Later he would resolve them into liv- 
 ing realities, his power to crystallize great moments, ex- 
 alted moods pregnant of the temper of his time, the 
 product of the two races from which he sprang, he the 
 militant dreamer revealing in his work the passionate and 
 rugged vigor of the doer and the seer. 
 
 Poor, knowing the pinch of poverty so common in the 
 Quartier St. Victor, Auguste had from babyhood been 
 reared in the presence of realities. He had been steeped 
 in life itself, its struggle and its bareness, its hardness and 
 its pain, yet pervaded by the half-toned mellowness of 
 
The Boy of Cosmic Symbolism 221 
 
 the ages, his sensitive soul absorbing the gray-gold beauty 
 and fantastic wonder enveloping him, tradition's record 
 graven upon the jumbled roofs and moss-stained walls of 
 this Quartier St. Victor hid away a quiet backwater bor- 
 dering the stream of modernity. There was the Pan- 
 theon, Greek in its classic outlines, as in very truth the 
 bits of wall and statuary, the mosaic paved baths and bas- 
 reliefs lingering in the shaded cloister garth of the Cluny, 
 breathed the spirit of that ancient world of Greece and 
 Rome, imbuing the lad with the splendor and the beauty 
 of those immortal artists and builders of a far-flung civil- 
 ization and culture. There was St. Etienne guarding the 
 tomb of Ste. Genevieve, its bizarre picturesqueness rising 
 within the shadow of the Pantheon, while across the 
 square the buildings of the Sorbonne and the Schools 
 were grouped, the centre since the thirteenth century of 
 French learning, mediaeval and renaissance; while near 
 the Cluny the rambling old church of St. Severin, its walls 
 incense-soaked with the prayers of centuries, resonant of 
 the chant of countless worshippers, its mystic silences 
 holding for the lad the inexpressible, even as the Church's 
 symbolism spoke to the Boy in terms of deepest reverence, 
 appealing as it did, not only to his aesthetic sense, but 
 also to his mystic nature, his aloofness demanding this 
 veiled form to express the deep things of his soul, it being 
 likewise the highest and the truest means of expression in 
 art as well as in religion. 
 
 Certain places always stood out in the Boy's mind, their 
 atmosphere bearing potently upon his entire after life. 
 This Quartier St. Victor, crowded, picturesque, squalid, 
 even, hinting of the East with its network of streets, its 
 jumbled, low-ceilinged shops dating back to the guilds, 
 and over which played shadow and golden light, indica- 
 tive of life, its age-old mystery, its familiar charm, this 
 
222 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 bit of old Gothic Paris gripping the Boy's soul because 
 of its human quality; for he was very close to life, this 
 Boy interpreter, loving the soil of Paris as the peasant 
 loves the brown earth of his pasture land. Then from 
 the rudely-paved streets, he would slip into that haven of 
 dreams, the Luxemburg Gardens bathed in summer sun- 
 shine, there to dream beneath the arched summits of the 
 limes and hawthorns, their fragrance sharpening to poig- 
 nancy his love of beauty, his sense of mellowed glory en- 
 veloping the Gardens as a mist. In this oasis of Paris, 
 relic of royal France, there lingered amid the scented 
 flowers those colored bits of France's history, profoundly 
 moving the self-contained enthusiasm of the Boy. From 
 these broken fragments of past glories, Auguste gleaned 
 those quickened seeds of spiritual power that were to 
 stamp France great in the days to come. He, with his 
 artist's instinct, absorbing unconsciously the atmosphere 
 about him, seeing into the soul of things, was to give 
 back again in his heroic figures the spirit of France, the 
 soul of Paris, reaching out toward the limitless spaces of 
 the sea. To Auguste, the child, the shaded walks with 
 their arched avenues of trees, possessed the magic of 
 forest aisles through which his imagination roamed free, 
 finding new vistas opening continually. Thus as he wan- 
 dered down those gold-green avenues pushing his way 
 into the very heart of the magic wood, he found dark, 
 sunless patches, deep, cool and full of mystery, the gold 
 and shadow of the Quartier St. Victor, symbol, really, of 
 life itself, swept in its full-rounded beauty by storm as 
 well as sunshine. To this Boy of the Paris streets, life 
 was an ever-changing mystery, a reality that must be met 
 squarely, robustly. The grimness of its struggle Auguste 
 had known ; it belonged to his own gray-walled surround- 
 ings ; but this nearness to its drabness had not made him 
 
The Boy of Cosmic Symbolism 223 
 
 fear it. Rather, he had grasped it the more firmly, pierc- 
 ing its grayness until he found the gold lurking beneath. 
 He accepted it with that certain matter-of-factness be- 
 longing to the poor, as a thing that existed and therefore 
 must be met. In penetrating life, he discovered beauty in 
 all its resplendence and wonder until he felt the exquisite 
 pain of one wholly awakened, conscious of the palpitating 
 beauty of the world about him. 
 
 Through nature, he would approach art, giving in his 
 rough-hewn statues the essence, the epitome of life itself. 
 So he translated in terms of cosmic symbolism the inner 
 meaning of life, crystallizing pregnant moments, revealing 
 the whole. The Boy's approach to Notre-Dame and St. 
 Pierre-de-Beauvais, those forests of stone which had their 
 being from the ancient forests of France, became for him 
 a symbol, the swaying forest trees caught by the artist 
 workmen of the giant age that gave them birth, and im- 
 mortalizing them in stone, the passionate life of the 
 Gothic. Life in motion rather than life in rest as re- 
 vealed in the classic, was the thing that gripped the Boy, 
 holding him by its blended strength and beauty, life throb- 
 bing, passionate, vital. Love of the forest, of nature, 
 awakened in him a peculiar understanding of those gray- 
 gold cathedrals, an understanding to be reflected in all 
 his work. As the Boy had made crude sketches of the 
 flowers and birds in the Gardens, so now, as he wandered 
 about the cathedral aisles, the sunlight filtering in through 
 the stained glass windows, or lingered in some dim-lighted 
 chapel centered about the red sanctuary lamp, his spirit 
 swinging free as in a greenwood sanctuary, he would 
 make mental sketches, his thoughts slowly resolving into 
 the vaster conceptions that were to grow from beneath his 
 purposeful fingers. Symbolic of France, these century- 
 scarred cathedrals to the Boy, their loftiness and daring, 
 
224 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 their virile beauty, their sculptured walls and pinnacles 
 aspiring to the perfection of the ancient Greeks, a kinship 
 won by those artists of the great Middle Age because of 
 a like complete sincerity, — the keynote too of this embryo 
 artist leaning upon the stone parapet of the Petit Pont 
 his fingers still quivering with the joy of the touch of the 
 wet clay yielding to his hand. Auguste possessed not only 
 clarity of vision, but a deep-seated sincerity holding him 
 faithful to that vision. Isolated, misunderstood, yet he 
 knew that only by clinging to his vision as he saw it could 
 he give of his highest and his best. Poverty had early 
 taught this boy of the Paris streets of creating happiness, 
 of finding resource within himself. To live fully, to enjoy 
 life with all the passionate intensity of the young, healthy 
 fawn, to get close to nature's heart, the Boy's life to be 
 enriched further by friendship, — this was the background 
 against which his living monuments in stone were to be 
 set. So early the lad had learned the secret of living, 
 finding beauty in the brown earth, in the simple things of 
 life ; lifting them up into his world of dreams, never let- 
 ting go life's realities. His background was to be further 
 enriched by his reading; for he drank hungrily of the 
 Greek poets and dramatists, the Roman historians and old 
 French chronicles, Dante, Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, 
 Baudelaire, a rich storehouse opening up endless avenues 
 for the Boy, developing his intellectual powers as well as 
 stimulating his imagination to white heat. The fruits of 
 this reading were to be gathered up into those two colos- 
 sal conceptions of his, "The Gate of Hell," and "The 
 Burghers of Calais," compositions conceived by a master 
 mind, by a man who has absorbed the best in literature, 
 history and art, a man of great soul, of prophetic vision. 
 His genius joined to the richness of his intellect, "the 
 simplicity of heart that creates faith. Genius believes 
 
The Boy of Cosmic Symbolism 225 
 
 even more than it thinks." In that faith this Boy was 
 to create that which was immortal. Auguste's was a re- 
 flective mind, no detail being too minute to escape him 
 whether in nature, or in the labyrinth of detail in the 
 cathedrals, or in the stream of surging life about him. Re- 
 flective, yet acutely sensitive, the lad's thoughts matured 
 slowly, unfolding to full realization as a flower bursting 
 into full bloom reveals in its sudden realization of per- 
 fection, a completeness, a breathless beauty unsuspected 
 in the brown seed. As this was the keynote to the Boy's 
 finely strung nature, so it would be the keynote to his art 
 which was to speak out of the very essence of his being. 
 
 Possessed of the gift of determining the value of the 
 object and its setting, the lad was to see in the unhewn 
 block of marble the figure hidden within ; his task to hew 
 away the stone until, under his master touch, the figure 
 would stand forth living, free, immortal. To him life was 
 movement, and so he was to interpret it in all his work, 
 that movement in which lay the strength of Michel An- 
 gelo, as in the perfection of his modeling. In these two 
 qualities, together with an absolute sincerity, lay Au- 
 guste's kinship with the great Italian master and the 
 ancients. Art through the study of nature, was to reach 
 fruition in him as he was to lead France back to the 
 heights of art to which by heritage she belonged. 
 
 Standing in the gathering dusk upon the Petit Pont of 
 the year 1855, the Boy's mind slipped back to those early 
 school days in the rue St. Jacques, rough and tumble days 
 devoid of beauty and the things his soul craved. Au- 
 guste's father was an "employe," a good father desiring to 
 do his best by the lad. So at twelve, the Boy was sent to 
 his uncle in Beauvais where he was placed in a boarding 
 school, a drab existence, lacking all companionship, and 
 in which hated mathematics pursued him like a night- 
 
226 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 mare. Being near-sighted, Auguste could not always see 
 what was written on the blackboard, a fact mitigating 
 against the lad who was accused of sulkiness and failure 
 to respond and do the tasks assigned him. The one bit 
 of sunshine in those two years from home, was the giant 
 cathedral of St. Pierre to which the lad went to pour out 
 his heart, that soul-satisfying and soul-stirring cathedral 
 leaving an indelible impress upon the Boy's mind and soul, 
 troubling the depths of his nature, laying the seeds of as- 
 piration that in after years were to germinate and grow 
 to perfection under the sure touch of his square artist 
 hands. Now after two years of exile he had returned to 
 his bare but tenderly loved home in the rue de l'Arbalete 
 to enter the Petite Ecole in the old rue de Medecine, 
 where, for the first time the lad found himself in a con- 
 genial atmosphere, in a milieu of originality and life, sur- 
 rounded by a little group of beginners in every line, bud- 
 ding artists, many of them, like himself. As far back as 
 he could remember, he had used his pencil, and his 
 parents, realizing that this son of theirs was possessed of 
 no ordinary gifts, were determined, with that artistic 
 appreciation characteristically French, to give Auguste a 
 chance to perfect his drawing, even though they were too 
 poor to provide him with special masters. It had been 
 the beginning of a new heaven and a new earth for the 
 Boy, and his days at the school passed all too quickly. 
 Twice a week he attended Barye's classes at the Jardin 
 des Plantes, he and Barye's son forming a close friend- 
 ship. In the cellar of the museum they arranged a studio, 
 making chairs out of tree trunks. There the lads copied 
 anatomical objects or drew flowers and animals, deepen- 
 ing Auguste's love of nature, and his realization that the 
 heights of art were reached only through nature. At the 
 Louvre, at the Bibliotheque Nationale, he made drawings 
 
The Boy of Cosmic Symbolism 227 
 
 from the antique, making also careful study of the science 
 of draperies, all of which was to be of value to him in the 
 days to come. From the rue de Richelieu the Boy trudged 
 to the Gobelins, where he spent the waning afternoon 
 hours following the course in ■ design, reveling in this 
 work which placed him before nature itself, before the 
 nude quivering with life, motion and emotion. 
 
 To-day, fingering the clay for the first time, the Boy 
 had slipped suddenly into a world of enchantment. Rev- 
 elation had come to this lad of scarce fifteen. He had 
 found his path, the metier in which he was to search for 
 the form of things, by which he was to give his truest, 
 his sublime expression. Carpeaux, the great Carpeaux, 
 had praised him ! This master had perceived the genius 
 lurking in the clay figure the lad had shown him. 
 
 "You understand the structure of the human body, mon 
 garcon. Les bonshommes tiennent," Carpeaux had said 
 delightedly. "You are a born sculptor. This gift is 
 nothing without the will to make it worth while. Have 
 you this Auguste?" 
 
 The Boy had looked up at the master his gray-blue eyes 
 afire, his body quivering with the exaltation of the mo- 
 ment. 
 
 "The patience of water, monsieur, that eats the rock 
 drop by drop." 
 
 The master smiled. 
 
 "Then I shall have no fear, Auguste. You will arrive, 
 and some day France will be proud of you." 
 
 Carpeaux had left the Boy among the stars, and when 
 nine o'clock had struck, Auguste had slipped out alone 
 into the June twilight, bringing his joy to Notre-Dame and 
 to the river before he went home to tell his loved ones of 
 his good fortune. At last the pathway of his dreams was 
 opening to him, and he would heed the call, a call to 
 
228 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 battle as well as to create ; for to this Boy of vision his 
 robust independence of soul would fight to the end that 
 art, as he saw it, the art of the ancients and of Michel 
 Angelo, of which he was to be the modern exponent, 
 should prevail. From the time of his rejection at the 
 Beaux-Arts he was to fight that hydra of a hundred 
 heads, the Institute, with all the force of his Lorrainer 
 consciousness ; for he knew how to estimate to a nicety 
 what he was fighting for. To him, rewards were as 
 nothing, true happiness lying rather in untrammeled, 
 passionate toil, in the exercise of a growing intelligence 
 determined not to be stopped on the road to discovery, 
 nor turned aside short of the realization of his vision. 
 His reward lay in his work well done, not in the fickle 
 praise of those who substituted dexterity for conscience. 
 Though he knew it not, the lad at that moment, was even 
 as his man awakening to nature, his man of bronze to be, 
 passing from the unconsciousness of the primitive, un- 
 awakened boy into the age of understanding and love. 
 
 About the Boy brooded the sentient beauty of the June 
 night, the city's lights reflectant in the waters of the 
 Seine; above him the canopy of stars into which the 
 shadowy outlines of Notre-Dame reached up in suppliant 
 beauty. Shadows had deepened the quiet of the Gardens 
 which, like his own Quartier St. Victor, were to him 
 Paris, the Paris of sunshine and shadow, of mellowed 
 beauty and of grim purposefulness, Paris pleasure-loving 
 yet sweetly serious which later he was to epitomize in La 
 Pensee and La Pucelle. As he gazed up at the vanishing 
 cathedral across the square he saw as in a vision France 
 from whose forests this mighty monument had sprung, 
 France, his beloved France, as he would conceive her 
 later in his colossal figure, further revealing her soul in 
 his "Burghers of Calais." So his mind turned to the 
 
The Boy of Cosmic Symbolism 229 
 
 river flowing beneath him so steadily seaward, that mind 
 that must inevitably seek likewise the open, spaceless 
 sea; for the Boy's soul was to reach beyond Paris, be- 
 yond his beloved France into the vastness of the Uni- 
 versal. In his "Man Awakening to Nature," above all, 
 in his giant, brooding "Thinker," he was to rise into the 
 realms of the cosmic, his symbolism of the titanic quality 
 belonging to Olympus and the Age of Michel Angelo. 
 Even as the Boy leaned upon the parapet gazing into the 
 star-hung night, the hum of the city all about him, he 
 realized dimly what the future held for him. Toil un- 
 ceasing, unremitting, was to be his lot along this road 
 the gods had opened to him, a road lonely, without com- 
 panionship save that of misunderstanding, blindness and 
 crass prejudice ; yet at whose ending lay the realization of 
 his dreams. For this he would work, as infinitely patient 
 as water eating away the stone drop by drop, his reward 
 in the joy of revealing the figure hidden in the heart of 
 the unhewn marble, this Boy of Cosmic Symbolism, the 
 thinker, the interpreter, speaking with poetic vision out of 
 the marble transformed by the touch of his square build- 
 er's hands. With a sigh Auguste turned away from the 
 Petit Pont, wending his way through the dark, crooked 
 streets, passed the Cluny and the Sorbonne, the Pantheon 
 and St. Etienne to the rue de l'Arbalete whose rugged 
 personality he was one day to immortalize in stone. 
 
STEVENSON— THE BOY OF TREASURE ISLAND 
 
 THE late September day was cold and bleak, a black 
 wind having swept in from the sea bringing with it 
 a gray rain that half shrouded the cliffs at the harbor 
 mouth, and the end of the partially-built breakwater in 
 a web of mist. The night set in with the wind still rising, 
 the sea slowly gathering strength as for an onslaught, its 
 dull roar among the outer reefs like the eternal grinding 
 of the millstones of Menja and Fenja. Then of a sudden 
 the wind fell, and the stars began to peep from beneath 
 the edges of the scudding clouds: but the sea pounding 
 against the cliffs roared on, its restlessness unstilled, its 
 voice insistent, ceaseless, its cry impelling in the deep 
 hush of the night. 
 
 For the Boy Louis it had been also a day of storm and 
 stress, a day when a black wind had swept his soul, and 
 the voice of the sea had beat upon his ears until he had 
 been driven from his room in the stone cottage by the 
 harbor's edge. With swinging strides he had mounted 
 the gaunt cliff guarding the harbor, and there from its 
 summit he now stood looking down into the gray swirl 
 of waters. Fitfully the moon shone out from beneath 
 the broken fleet of clouds silhouetting his tall, slim figure 
 against the barren hillside. He was but sixteen, perhaps 
 a trifle older, this brown-faced, fair-haired lad ; yet alone 
 here in sight and hearing of the sea, he had heard Destiny 
 calling, and in that moment he knew that his work was to 
 be other than the one chosen for him by his father, the 
 profession that came to him as an inheritance, and for 
 
 230 
 
The Boy of Treasure Island 231 
 
 which his career was being shaped, — that of a lighthouse 
 engineer. Even now he was in charge of the building of 
 the breakwater across the harbor, a giant task and one 
 full of discouragements as the inroads of the two days' 
 storm bore witness ; but it was not because of the destruc- 
 tion of a few weeks work that he wished to give up this 
 task. To build, to tear down and to build up again with 
 infinite patience was characteristic of him even now. His 
 material was the thing he cried out against. Words, not 
 blocks of granite were the medium through which he must 
 express himself, if he was to give of his highest and his 
 best. Yet he hesitated to tell his father of his longing, 
 for he knew well the bitterness of the disappointment if 
 he, Louis, the only son, defied family tradition. A wall 
 of reserve had sprung up between him and his much- 
 loved father that troubled the Boy. He longed to speak 
 out, to be frank in this and in the more serious question 
 of his belief which had already begun to slip the leash 
 of dogma; yet he dreaded the pain such frankness would 
 inflict, and thus far had remained silent. A great tender- 
 ness glowed in his dark eyes as he thought of him, and he 
 smiled seeing in their very likeness to each other the cause 
 of their dissension. The points of resemblance far out- 
 balanced the differences. The Boy possessed something 
 of his mother's noble spirit likewise, — a dauntlessness, a 
 sunny cheeriness that offset the profound melancholy of 
 the Scot, an element so dominant in his father. It was 
 from his father that the Boy came by the vivid imagina- 
 tion and that spirit of adventure and romance so distinc- 
 tive a characteristic in him, that restless, creative imagina- 
 tion that in a moment would gather the hosts of a dream 
 world about him, weaving from out these gossamer 
 threads patterns of fantastic loveliness, or, more often, 
 of colorful picturesqueness, — tales of horror and blood- 
 
232 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 curdling adventure "with ships and roadside inns, robbers, 
 old sailors and commercial travelers before the era of 
 steam," later to be bound up in the delights of "Treasure 
 Island." Love of these tales dated back to earliest in- 
 fancy, when wakefulness caused by ill-health made weari- 
 some the long nights, nights when the Boy's vivid imagi- 
 nation was given rein until the terror of the blackness 
 stole over him, his fears stilled only by the tender care of 
 "Cummy," the devoted nurse, and of his father who 
 would sit by him telling him tales or feigning conversa- 
 tions with imaginary people. The sensitiveness of the 
 Boy's imagination portrayed itself also in the wild 
 wrought fancies that his Calvinistic upbringing regarding 
 the terrors of hell had inspired in him. On stormy 
 nights when the wind had broken loose over the town, 
 it was as if he could hear the howl of the Devil's passing, 
 and the clinking of his horse's bit and stirrups. This 
 fantastic quality the Boy carried into his play, touching 
 as it did not only that deep vein of romance and love of 
 adventure, but also that other element in him that came 
 •to him from his sturdy grandfather, that love of action 
 which was never to die in him despite the bondage of ill- 
 health from which he never was to be free. 
 
 Standing on the cliff flooded now by a waning moon, 
 a reminiscent mood upon him, the Boy's thoughts strayed 
 back to the garden of Colinton Manse in which so many 
 days of his early childhood were spent. About this old 
 place the child wove a web of mystery and romance, es- 
 pecially about the garden that had first held his imagina- 
 tion. The old Manse possessed a haunting, dreamy qual- 
 ity also, something of an exotic atmosphere — as in the 
 India room — fascinating to the Boy because of its 
 strangeness. The beauty of the sloping lawn in the gar- 
 den, "a perfect goblet of sunshine, and the Dionysius ear 
 
[The Boy of Treasure Island 233 
 
 for a whole forest of bird-songs" swept over him, and he 
 recalled the blossoming lilac bush that stood within the 
 semi-circle of laurels which he and his playmates had 
 identified as the "tree whose shadow was death." It was 
 in the great laurel bush at the corner he had lain hidden 
 with his toy gun waiting for the herd of antelopes that 
 never came. Again, finding in the river a small island" of 
 yellow sand that moved beneath his feet, it became on the 
 instant a quicksand, a "place as ominous as the lilac bush." 
 Then there was the path leading from the stable shadowed 
 by the great yew along the retaining wall of the kirkyard, 
 and called by the Boy the Witches Walk, a spot shrouded 
 in mystery, in gloom, in horror even, suggestive of the 
 supernatural. The Boy and his two cousins, "with the 
 strange attraction of fear," were forever hovering about 
 the moss-grown retaining wall of the kirkyard looking for 
 "spunkies," and many a night Louis recalled sitting by his 
 bedroom window in the old Manse hoping to see spunkies 
 playing among the graves. One evening had etched itself 
 upon his memory, an evening just at dusk, when he and 
 his companions discovered a "burning eye looking out 
 from a hole in the retaining wall." The gloom shrouding 
 the spot, the death-like stillness, the eerieness of the super- 
 natural had stolen over their spirits as they had discussed 
 gravely in awed whispers as to whether it was a bird of 
 ill-omen roosting in the cranny of the wall, or whether 
 it was some dead man who was sitting up in his coffin and 
 watching them with that strange, fixed eye, — a conclusion 
 that they always maintained, having one by one peered 
 through the cranny at this supernatural being. Thus to 
 the Boy everything was a symbol, the kernel of an ad- 
 venture, the heart of a romance. To him all things were 
 alive. Nature was a sentient, responsive thing that called 
 to him always, bringing him solace in his boyhood moods 
 
234 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 of joy, or of weariness when ill-health held him bound. 
 To him certain gardens "cried aloud for a murder ; certain 
 old houses demanded to be haunted; certain coasts were 
 set apart for shipwreck. Other spots again, seemed to 
 abide their destiny, suggestive and impenetrable." So 
 through the gateway of his imagination, the Boy had 
 slipped away, "an Ariel free to wander as fancy promp- 
 ted," this life of the spirit giving him a freedom of 
 which none could rob him. This gateway to Treasure 
 Island, first opened to him by his father, was further 
 opened by his mother and Cummy who read to him inde- 
 fatigably, filling his soul with pleasurable delight, when 
 for weeks together he was confined to the "land of coun- 
 terpane." The spot in his memory was still sensitive to 
 the first time his mother had read him "Macbeth." Con- 
 sciousness of the delight of reading to himself came to 
 him suddenly when he was eight years old, an incident re- 
 vealing likewise how even then beauty gripped him. The 
 memory flashed upon him now standing there in the night 
 — a day warm and beautiful spent with his cousin in a 
 "sandy wilderness across the road" ; then evening coming 
 on, "evening with a great flash of color and a heavenly 
 sweetness in the air," the Boy forgetting all, his play, his 
 companion in contemplation of the wonderful beauty en- 
 veloping him. Then, being sent on an errand, and being 
 still in dreamy mood, the Boy took with him a book of 
 fairy-tales, and as he followed the path through a fir- 
 wood, he fell to reading as he walked, and suddenly he 
 knew that he loved reading. 
 
 While thus he absorbed much, enlarging ever the power 
 and scope of his imagination, yet the Boy had already 
 tasted of the wonder and fascination of creation. When 
 only six he had won a prize offered by his uncle David 
 for the best history of Moses, and from that moment he 
 
The Boy of Treasure Island 235 
 
 had but one desire, he had worked for but one end, — to 
 write to be "in the truest sense an author." He laughed 
 a little bitterly now thinking of the accusations that all 
 his days he had been an idler. Perhaps in the tasks set 
 before him; but he was busy enough on his own private 
 end the learning to write. That was a passion with him, 
 and never did he go out without two books in his pocket, 
 one to read and one to write in, dimly realizing even then 
 that writing was a science as exacting as the building of 
 lighthouses, an art to be mastered not without toil and 
 long years of labor with no thought of reward save per- 
 fection, a vision that he was to keep bright throughout 
 the years. Though he possessed a poet's mind and a 
 poet's senses, the Boy's attitude, now wholly unconscious, 
 was scientific in its exactness, thoroughness and coolness 
 in its keenness in piercing the cause that produced the 
 effect. This interest in "the whole page of experience, 
 and in his perpetual quest and fine scent for all that seems 
 romantic to a boy," came to him an inheritance from the 
 sturdy builder of the Bell Rock Light, his grandfather, 
 whose name he likewise bore. "Perfection was his de- 
 sign," and nothing short of the perfection of his art 
 would satisfy this Boy whom Destiny was calling, and to 
 whose call he was slowly but surely awakening. Celtic 
 this poet's vision in him, Celtic too this scientific craving 
 for perfection, as was the deep vein of spirituality and 
 passion surging through him ; for in him were two diver- 
 gent elements handed down by his grandfather and grand- 
 mother, — worldly ambition, a desire for attainment in 
 their work in the world, and a deep inherent spirituality 
 and unworldliness, a living in a land of dreams about 
 which flowed unheeded the realities of a material world. 
 Already he felt within him that strange mingling of con- 
 flicting elements, a cavalier fondness for gaiety that was 
 
236 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 offset by a more serious strain, for he was no less a son of 
 the Covenanters, the strain of the moralizing Covenanter 
 jostling the madcap jester, the sprite in him. His sensi- 
 tive, gentle kindliness softened the strains of iron tenacity 
 and will even to obstinacy seething within him. Supreme 
 among the diverse elements striving for mastery, were pa- 
 tience and its opposite, a patience indefatigable in its en- 
 durance either in illness or in accomplishment; an impa- 
 tience that blazed up when he was confronted with in- 
 sincerity, affectation, or with the snobbishness of those 
 who did not accept him in spite of his personal appear- 
 ance. Both kinds of physical courage were his, — the 
 active, delighting in danger, revealing the adventurer and 
 experimentalist in him ; and the passive, unshaken in en- 
 durance. Coupled with physical courage went tremen- 
 dous moral courage, that high courage expressing itself 
 in a noble humility, a simplicity, a readiness to pay for 
 faults committed, an outspokenness and a facing un- 
 flinchingly of situations and their consequences. Stern- 
 ness and tenderness dwelt together within him, a ready 
 sympathy that left him ever poor in purse though rich in 
 friends. Swept by emotion, French in its intensity, by 
 an unquenchable energy that spent itself in a "fury of 
 play," by a perfect intoxication of joy at the sight of some 
 beautiful object in nature, in art, in music, yet he pos- 
 sessed no less a restraint, giving him a fine poise, distin- 
 guishing the Boy. His frankness was tinged with reserve 
 regarding those things that touched him deeply. 
 
 As he stood upon the cliff, his mind skirting the bor- 
 derland of his childhood, a great loneliness swept over 
 him. He felt as he had often felt before in his solitary 
 dreamy childhood when he had "flown his private signal 
 and none had heeded; when he had seemed abroad in a 
 world from which the yerv hope of intimacy had van- 
 
The Boy of Treasure Island 237 
 
 ished." That he was made for contest, that life for him 
 would be a battleground he even then dimly realized ; yet 
 the Boy, filled with longing to follow his heart's desire, 
 yearned for the understanding and companionship of his 
 father which for the moment was denied him. Even the 
 heights whither he would climb were shrouded in mist. 
 As he stood there looking out across the gray swirl of 
 waters, the moon swinging low in the Western sky, it was 
 as if his burning eyes strove in vain to pierce the wall of 
 night encompassing him. Then turning toward the east, 
 he saw, as in a dream, an inland sea touched with the first 
 flush of the dawn, the delicate tints of morning creeping 
 across the sky. Presently a bird's song, then another 
 broke in upon the hush of night until the hillside was 
 vibrant with the song of birds awakening. Night might 
 envelope the hills and the sea ; but there was always the 
 dawn. That then was his answer. He saw his way clear 
 at last. He would go to his father, he would be frank 
 with him and so be honest with himself. He would en- 
 deavor to break down the wall of reserve that was forcing 
 them apart. For the rest he would have faith and pa- 
 tience. In that moment too, the Boy remembered his 
 friends, those friends who had come but lately into his 
 life and were to have no small part in the moulding and 
 shaping of his future. Friendship was to be his bulwark 
 even as love for his friends was strong and true; and 
 there was always Treasure Island, that realm of the 
 imagination wherein his richest treasures lay beyond the 
 reach of the marauder. For the Boy to whom revelation 
 had come would always find refuge there, an island world 
 having the spacelessness of the sea for its boundary line, 
 and upon whose heights beat eternally the deathless music 
 of the spheres. The child would live on in him always, 
 in real survival, with all its freshness of perception un- 
 
238 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 impaired, with none of its play instincts in the least de- 
 gree extinguished or made ashamed. And therein was to 
 lie his power of vision, his interpretation of truth. 
 
 Pondering upon these things in the first flush of the 
 morning, the loveliness of an awakening world about 
 him, the Boy turned to leave the cliff, peace in his heart. 
 The way he had chosen he knew well would be like the 
 path leading up to the summit where he stood, steep and 
 rough with stones; but it led toward the heights of his 
 desire. There he too would build a light, not of stone, 
 but of words that would endure. And who may say that 
 the light that the Boy of Treasure Island was to build 
 would not outshine even the Bell Rock Light and the 
 light of Dhu Heartach, its rays reaching into the far cor- 
 ners of the world? 
 
KITCHENER— THE BOY OF KHARTOUM 
 
 A WILD bit of the Irish coast it was, rugged, heather- 
 strewn cliffs broken by a stretch of shingle at the 
 head of Taplee Bay in Kerry, where the Boy went most 
 often to swim, and on this particular June afternoon he 
 had sought its solitude "to think things out" — his laconic 
 answer always if questioned as to why he had gone off 
 alone. Some of the June sunshine seemed to creep into 
 the Boy's steel-blue eyes as he paused tall, lithe, clean- 
 limbed at the top of the beach and looked off across the 
 still green waters of the Bay toward the haze-rimmed 
 horizon. Overhead clouds floated slowly southward. Out 
 of the gorse and heather of the cliff a lark rose swiftly 
 filling the pungent air with its song. The gentle lapping of 
 the tide roused the Boy, and quickly stripping, he plunged 
 eagerly into the gray-green water. Though only twelve, 
 the Boy was a splendid swimmer, his long even strokes 
 portraying endurance, latent power, a reserve force equal 
 to emergencies ; and as he swam along, he seemed to revel 
 in his strength. His keen eyes followed the dark line of 
 the cliff edged in purple and gold, noting near the shore 
 lines of seaweed swaying idly on the tide, betokening 
 some recent storm somewhere out there upon the mist- 
 shrouded Atlantic that ever held in thrall his imagination ; 
 but save for these strings of gold-brown weed and kelp, 
 there was no suggestion of a storm in the lightly wind- 
 swept waters of the Bay. On and on the Boy swam 
 steadily toward the distant headland guarding one en- 
 trance of Taplee Bay, turning at length upon his back 
 
 239 
 
240 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 to float and rest himself. The afternoon lay before him. 
 Why should he hurry ? It was a day for dreams, and as 
 the Boy lay there on his back, his face turned to the June 
 sky, he gave rein to his fancy, letting it drift even as the 
 tide shoreward only to flood out again beyond the head- 
 lands into the open sea. This afternoon his mind swept 
 out into the as yet unexplored open sea; for that very 
 morning, an important decision had been reached in his 
 future career. A few weeks hence he would slip away 
 from this old familiar life of the Bay, and the spirit of 
 adventure in him was quickened though mingled with it 
 lay the subconscious knowledge that when he went to 
 Grand Clos School at Villeneuve, the old life would be 
 gone forever. What would life out there be like he won- 
 dered dreamily? A struggle against odds in which one 
 must win ? His eyes flashed at the thought ; for struggle 
 for mastery, that boundless energy that pushed on to ac- 
 complishment was characteristic of the Boy even at eight, 
 a Saxon energy that found its complement in the Boy's 
 nature in the French thoroughness and austere devotion to 
 the minutest detail, his inheritance from his mother who 
 had given to this son of hers her French imagination and 
 her love of dreams also. Yet despite the adventure in 
 this new life opening before him, he would miss the old 
 life at Cottagh House keenly ; for he loved this wild, deso- 
 late Irish coast as he loved the simple Irish peasants with 
 their ready wit and their kindly smile. He by birth, if not 
 inheritance, was imbued with the spirit of the Celt. He 
 was part and parcel of the soil, and he loved it with all 
 the intensity of his strong, passionate nature that, be- 
 cause of his shyness and his reticence, he could not ex- 
 press; passing thus as cold and unresponsive when his 
 heart was all on fire. 
 The Boy's imagination had been early kindled by 
 
The Boy of Khartoum 241 
 
 his old nurse, Nanna, he called her, and she had instilled 
 in him a belief in kelpies, in fairies and the like as she 
 wove for him the folk lore of Kerry, embroidered and 
 enriched out of her own Celtic imagination. So the magic 
 of Ireland wove its spell about the lad, sensitizing him, a 
 priceless gift that in after years was to aid him in sensing 
 danger, in interpreting invisible signs and symbols, that 
 sensitiveness to atmosphere so inborn in the Celt, due, 
 perhaps, to the Celt's swift, responsive sympathy. This 
 world of dreams opened to him by his nurse, the Boy 
 augmented and enlarged by reading tales of Celtic gods 
 and heroes, steeping his imagination thus in the green gold 
 of romance springing from every cranny of the rugged 
 cliffs even as the shamrock and the gorse. To this 
 woman, his beloved Nanna, the Boy gave all the .deep 
 love and devotion of his strong, passionate nature, a love 
 that would live always, a devotion that even in the 
 crowded years of manhood would never fail to seek 
 Nanna out, bringing joy to her old, faithful heart. 
 
 The active expression of his love of adventure, was 
 in the great cave beneath the cliff whither he even now 
 was heading, a cave hollowed out by the sea, whose drip- 
 ping walls echoed ever the swish and rumble of century- 
 old tides; and in whose depths, so tradition had it, lay 
 somewhere hidden a famous smuggler's treasure. He 
 and his brothers, Chevalier, Arthur and Walter, came 
 there seeking a treasure which they never found, but for 
 which they never wearied of hunting. They played at 
 being smugglers then, or, better still, at pirates robbing the 
 crew of a wrecked galleon of the famed Armada ; and in 
 these games the Boy, Herbert Kitchener, was indisputably 
 the leader. It was he who planned and outlined the as- 
 sault upon the unsuspecting and invisible foe ; and it was 
 he who, by the sheer force of his personality, led the 
 
242 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 attack. Yet to-day, as he lay upon his back in that still 
 water, it was solitude that he wanted, to think out this 
 new life of the open sea that was calling to him. He 
 was brought back sharply to reality by a gentle tugging 
 at his left leg that grew quickly into an insistent drawing 
 downward. For a moment the Boy's face whitened as 
 he swiftly recognized his danger. He was caught by a 
 piece of kelp that in all probability would suck him under 
 never to let him go. He jerked his leg trying to free him- 
 self only to find that the weed gripped the tighter. It was 
 after that that the real struggle began. It would not have 
 occurred to him to call for help had any been near. His 
 was a solitary, self-reliant mind accustomed to get him- 
 self out of difficulties unaided, to solve his own problems 
 without asking help or advice. So now he lay quietly 
 upon his back, his square-set jaws drawn down grimly, 
 the whole force of his will, gleaming in his keen blue 
 eyes, his body taut and still as the Boy bided his time for 
 the moment when he could free himself. That silent 
 struggle seemed a struggle of forces, the elemental striv- 
 ing to overcome the intellectual, a solitary struggle typical 
 of the Boy's whole life; for the Boy was to win success 
 through struggle, a success attained through a relentless 
 energy in mastering whatever he had in hand to do, this 
 relentless energy in him tempered by an inexhaustible 
 patience, a power to wait the psychological moment, a 
 quality inherited from his French mother whom he wor- 
 shipped. Would he never slip beyond the confines of the 
 Bay after all ? The desire to live welled up in him. Yet 
 the Boy lay motionless upon the Water, the sinuous kelp 
 about his leg. Presently his keen ears caught the soft 
 murmur of the coming tide, and with it came a gradual 
 loosening of the weed. He lay still not daring to move 
 lest it would tighten the grip of the gold-brown strand 
 
The Boy of Khartoum 243 
 
 of kelp. After a space, he moved his arms through the 
 water to find that he slipped forward slowly without feel- 
 ing the grip upon his leg. The tide and his will power 
 had saved him. His passive resistance had freed him 
 from the kelp at last. Swiftly he turned over and began 
 to make his way toward the shore, flinging himself upon 
 the shingle at the mouth of the smuggler's cave. Though 
 he would not have acknowledged it, a momentary reaction 
 had set in. It was the first time he had been so close to 
 death, and the memory of an old woman, the gardener's 
 mother, and a rose-clad cottage came to him. It was in 
 the days of his early childhood, at Gunsborough House, 
 before they had moved to their present home, that he had 
 gone to see this old woman, and she had read his fortune 
 in the tea leaves. "Sure, you will travel far, gasiur, and 
 see many lands, but it is the sea will call you at the end 
 of the road." The words had meant nothing then; but 
 
 now was this, then, a premonition, a first call of the 
 
 sea, he wondered ? He shuddered as he looked off across, 
 the silvered waters of the Bay. 
 
 • The Boy's thoughts slipped back to Gunsborough 
 House of homely beauty, its square white front trailed 
 with ivy, its close-cropped lawn splashed with the flowers 
 he loved. It was in those days that the Boy had been 
 given over wholly to his world of dreams and fancies, 
 dreams occupying time that should have been spent on 
 books at school; this dream world rent and rudely 
 broken into when he failed in his examinations, — his first 
 and only failure. His soldier father, a man of keen 
 humor and rare wisdom, dealt swiftly with the Boy, 
 realizing that the Boy's whole future hung in the balance. 
 He called his son to him. 
 
 "Herbert," he said, "a man must needs dream, must 
 possess the power of vision to be great; but, he must 
 
244 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 not let dreaming run away with him. As punishment, I 
 shall send you to the neighboring dame school until you 
 learn the value of mastering that which is at hand. Re- 
 member always, that the practical has its place as well 
 as dreams. 'Thoroughness' is our motto, you know, lad." 
 
 The Boy flushed now remembering how mortified and 
 humiliated he had turned away, his mind set in a sterner, 
 more determined mood. As he left the room his father 
 had called after him with his gay laugh. 
 
 "Another failure, and I shall apprentice you to a 
 hatter." 
 
 The Boy's humor had for a moment overtopped his 
 humiliation, and he had flashed back: 
 
 'T think it will be Woolwich, sir." 
 
 It was a turning point in the Boy's career. 'Thorough- 
 ness' became his watchword. The relentless energy in 
 mastering whatever task he had in hand became as 
 marked a characteristic in him as his love of dreams, the 
 one to be the complement of the other all his days. 
 
 The second great event of his life had come when the 
 family had moved from Gunsborough House to Cottagh 
 House, an old place steeped in romance, satisfying the 
 Boy's craving for the beautiful also. The old garden 
 crammed with flowers, and pervaded with a strange, 
 brooding peace, was to be the deep setting of his life, the 
 spot to which his thoughts would ever slip back, the 
 epitome, really, of the only home life he would ever know, 
 that life in the garden marking not only his love of the 
 beautiful, but representing likewise an intimate expres- 
 sion of his personality that in later years none but the 
 few would see or recognize; for the personality of the 
 man, though sharp-cut and distinctive in its power to 
 leave its impress upon the country he was to serve so 
 selflessly and so well, was to be merged as a quickening 
 
The Boy of Khartoum 245 
 
 spirit into the vastness of the empire he had visioned 
 and was to help to build. A wilderness that garden now, 
 for, 
 
 "Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruins all, 
 And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall." 
 
 Yet beneath the tangled desolation flowers would ever 
 spring up and blossom. 
 
 With the coming of the tide a faint breeze had sprung 
 up, ruffling the waters of the Bay, and the Boy scanned 
 the horizon looking for the fishing boats that at sunset 
 would be putting out to sea. He stretched himself lazily, 
 and leaned back against the entrance to the cave, his 
 thoughts flooding out again toward the future that was 
 opening for him. In a few days he would be thirteen, 
 and then, after the summer vacation, he was to go to 
 Grand Clos School at Villeneuve, and from there to Lon- 
 don where he would prepare for Woolwich. Then it was 
 that his life of service would begin, that life of service his 
 French mother had instilled in him from babyhood as 
 being the be-all and the end-all of every man, — the true 
 bulwark of the state. The smouldering fire in the Boy's 
 eyes flamed at the thought. A life of stern discipline it 
 would be, this life of service, a life in which every per- 
 sonal desire must be subservient to the accomplishment 
 of the task in hand, a life demanding all of his relentless 
 energy, his boundless ambition alone satisfied when com- 
 plete success should crown his efforts. Doubtless as the 
 old woman had said, he would travel far and see many 
 lands. The great avenues of the world were opening to 
 him, avenues leading into the far East, to Arabia, India, 
 southernmost Africa and Egypt, the land that even now 
 lured him; places where he would come not only face to 
 face with grave dangers, but with dangers that he might 
 
246 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 sense but never see. It would be then that his sensitive- 
 ness to atmosphere would stand him in good stead, and his 
 rare understanding of another's viewpoint, would become 
 an element of greatness in him; for no matter how 
 foreign or antagonistic was a man's point of view, he 
 could grasp it, appreciate it, and with that fine strain of 
 democracy in him, concede the right of an opinion other 
 than his own. These seeds of leadership and greatness, 
 were stirring unconsciously even now in the Boy's soul. 
 Hard and stern, people would call him. Yet he was 
 possessed of that true kindliness belonging to a strong, 
 deep nature. His shyness and his reticence would ever 
 conceal the depths of the emotions stirring him. His 
 was a solitary figure, even now as a boy a certain aloof- 
 ness setting him apart inevitably. His nature was of 
 that simple directness so marked a characteristic in his 
 soldier father, as was his hatred of display also. The 
 Boy worshipped his father, who represented to him al- 
 ways the true ideal of what a soldier should be; and the 
 Boy had taken to heart the lesson of the dame school. 
 He would keep his world of dreams. It would ever be 
 for him the inner shrine enfolding his power of vision 
 — without which no man can be truly great ; and just be- 
 cause of it, 'Thoroughness' and relentless energy would 
 be the undercurrent of his life, the mechanism in the ful- 
 filment of his dreams, the realization of his far-reaching 
 vision of imperial greatness for England, that mistress 
 to whose service his whole life was pledged. The Boy's 
 face glowed at the thought. Yes, the life out there be- 
 yond the headlands guarding the entrance of the Bay, 
 was calling to him, and soon he would be answering that 
 call. 
 
 The sun was at its setting, the summer clouds shot with 
 its gold glow, the water flushed to iridescence, and out 
 
The Boy of Khartoum 247 
 
 from the Bay one by one fishermen in their yellow oilers 
 steered their black boats out to the open sea while the 
 purple twilight gathered softly in the west. The Boy 
 rose slowly, stretched himself, and with a sigh turned to 
 the entrance of the cave, staring into its black depths 
 where all the romance, the dreams, the love of adventure 
 of his past life seemed gathered — the cave with its hidden 
 treasure of Spanish gold which he had sought, and, as 
 yet, never found. His would be a life of seeking, of ad- 
 venture, of struggle, but the Bay would know him no 
 more. His life would be that of the open sea that knows 
 no east, no west, no north, no south. For a moment 
 he stood thus, leaning against the dripping walls. Then 
 without a word he turned swiftly back to the beach half 
 covered now by the incoming tide. Even the cave had 
 echoed of the sea. In a few weeks the new life would 
 begin. , He too would be putting out to sea even as the 
 fishermen ; but for him there would be no returning to the 
 Bay. A breeze had sprung up, and already white-caps 
 dotted the green water. Of a sudden the thrill of battle 
 gripped the Boy. It would be a hard pull home, but he 
 would conquer, glorying in the struggle. A stray bullet 
 might catch him in some far-off land. Never the sea. 
 With eyes gleaming, he plunged into the foam-flecked 
 water, and with long, even strokes, set his face toward 
 the east. 
 
FOCH— THE BOY MYSTIC OF GASCONY 
 
 SEE, Sergeant! That is the fellow I should choose, 
 the dark chestnut with the broad chest and slender 
 legs." 
 
 "You have the eye for a good horse, monsieur Ferdi- 
 nand," the grizzled sergeant answered smiling down at 
 the lad beside him. 
 
 The Boy's blue-gray eyes flashed. 
 
 "I may ride him, sergeant ?" 
 
 "You are not afraid ?" the sergeant questioned measur- 
 ing the Boy's slim, graceful figure with an appraising 
 eye. None knew better than he the virile strength, the 
 keen intelligence, the quiet, dominating will of this 
 eighteen-year-old boy. 
 
 "Afraid, sergeant? He will obey when I speak." 
 
 The sergeant laughed. 
 
 "After inspection, monsieur. He will be surely chosen 
 for the army, that fine fellow." 
 
 "I, too, prepare for the army," the Boy answered 
 softly, his face suddenly aglow. "We shall be comrades, 
 that horse and I." 
 
 They were standing, the Boy, Ferdinand Foch, and the 
 old sergeant, on the edge of the range of the Remount 
 Station, watching the horses from which were selected 
 mounts for the light cavalry of the French army, descen- 
 dants of those Arab steeds abandoned by the Saracens 
 in their flight before Charles Martel. Behind the two 
 standing by the barrier, lay the town of Tarbes white 
 
 248 
 
The Boy Mystic of Gascony 249 
 
 and shimmering in the mid-August heat. Before them 
 stretched the wide fertile plains of Tarbes, their broad, 
 green surfaces broken by streams and irrigation trenches 
 bordered by stretches of pasture land and fields of maize, 
 the waving corn growing up to the slopes of the foothills 
 of the Pyrenees, slopes covered by vineyards whose pur- 
 pling beauty softened the bare, craggy summits of the 
 distant grim, cloud-hung peaks. 
 
 "At eleven, monsieur," the sergeant said, saluting 
 gravely. 
 
 The Boy gave a smart salute in return. 
 
 "At eleven, sergeant. It is understood. I will be here." 
 
 Even as a child, the Boy had often come here to this 
 spot, sometimes, as now, with his friend, the sergeant, 
 more often alone; for more than he loved to watch the 
 horses scampering about the green-swarded range, he 
 loved the beauty of the plains set against the gray grim- 
 ness of the snow-clad mountains rising tier upon tier into 
 the infinite blue, suggestive of strength unending, of tran- 
 quillity and power. It was ever to this southern barrier 
 of mountains that the Boy turned as to a friend in his 
 moments of exaltation and of need. To-day as his keen, 
 gray-blue eyes swept across the plain toward the Pic 
 Bigorre, he knew that he had come to a valley of decision 
 that he must reach if he was ever to attain the snow-clad 
 summits lying half hid now in mist, mists that he must 
 pierce to reach the blue. His school-days at Rodez and 
 at St. Etienne were ended, and at Metz, whither he was 
 going with the opening of the new school term, meant a 
 step influencing his whole after life ; for it meant a defin- 
 ite choosing of a career, and his heart was set on the 
 army, and on entering it by the gateway of the Ecole 
 Polytechnique. That had been his dream since, as a tiny 
 lad, his father had told him tales of the first Napoleon 
 
250 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 who had, for a time, held Europe in the hollow of his 
 hand. Later the Boy's imagination had been further en- 
 kindled by Thiers' "History of the Consulate and the 
 Empire," by Victor Hugo and by Michelet, books which 
 he devoured eagerly, his mind caught in the colorful ro- 
 mance of a man's great deeds which had won glory for 
 France. It was Napoleon's largeness of conception rather 
 than his character that caught the lad, the first Emperor's 
 colossal achievements standing out in sharp contrast to 
 the days of the Second Empire in which the Boy was 
 now living. Unconsciously he felt the largeness and, sin- 
 cerity, the reality and splendor of Napoleon's reign as 
 compared with the pettiness of the over-ornate imitation 
 of the third Napoleon, a period surfeited with a hothouse 
 luxuriance and extravagance doomed from its very ab- 
 normality to destruction, its pseudo-heroism a poor substi- 
 tute for the robust heroism of the great Napoleon. While 
 France, at the mercy of the Second Empire, swept on to 
 her doom, this Boy of Gascony was living in his world 
 of Napoleonic glory, a world of great military achieve- 
 ment, of heroism and romance, his mind seizing avidly 
 and with the inborn instinct of the strategist upon those 
 salient qualities marking Napoleon a great general ; recog- 
 nizing, too, his power of leadership, his ability not only 
 to turn every weakness of his foes to his own advantage, 
 but because of his confidence in himself to fire others 
 with his own white heat of enthusiasm. To the Boy's 
 keen mind, war as revealed in the Napoleonic campaigns, 
 was a passionate drama to be worked out with the same 
 relentless logic as a tragedy of Shakespeare, as life itself. 
 It possessed all the possibilities for the general that words 
 possessed for the dramatist or notes for the musician, and 
 its problems gripped his intellect even as the human ele- 
 ment stirred his imagination and his emotion, his sens]- 
 
The Boy Mystic of Gascony 251 
 
 tive, high-strung nature as vibrant as a violin string. Yet, 
 with all his passionate nature, his keen dramatic sense, he 
 possessed also that cool analytic quality of mind, that 
 power of intellectual detachment giving him that perfect 
 balance so' characteristically French, that quality of im- 
 personality in viewing a subject making for breadth of 
 vision, for clear thinking, these two qualities in him giving 
 promise of the greatness of the man to be. Duty and dis- 
 cipline had been instilled into the lad from babyhood, two 
 virtues founded by a wise father upon knowledge and 
 reason, this wisdom of the father to be set by the Boy 
 in after years as the standard by which the French army 
 should accomplish great deeds for France and for the 
 world. 
 
 This reverence for Napoleon I. had an intimately per- 
 sonal side for the Boy, touching him deeply and with more 
 subtle force than the mere historic reputation of the man. 
 Ferdinand's grandfather Dupre had served under the 
 Emperor in his war with Spain, and for his gallant ser- 
 vices had been made a chevalier of the empire. So the 
 Boy, of a truth, inherited from his mother that passion 
 for Napoleon, a passion influencing his whole life. From 
 his grandfather the Boy had learned first hand of that 
 campaign, his grandfather in his eyes the soldier hero 
 who had helped his Emperor win glory for France. This 
 veneration for the Emperor was encouraged by the 
 gentle Sophie Dupre, who was yet all fire, a soldier's 
 daughter handing down to this son of hers the soldier 
 spirit as well as that tender gentleness of strength to be 
 so characteristic of the marshal to be. 
 
 In his love of history, the Boy Ferdinand did not ac- 
 quaint himself merely with the great age of Napoleon, 
 though in the work destiny had designed for him, the 
 military genius pf the Emperor would ever be the back- 
 
252 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 ground from which he would draw his inspiration and his 
 technical knowledge of strategy. History, the history of 
 France all through the ages the lad fed upon — the driving 
 back of the Vandals by Charles Martel being to him 
 always a symbol, a symbol accentuated to the Boy of 
 Tarbes, whose religious faith burned within him a white 
 flame, because of St. Missolin, the priest whose relics 
 were preserved in the cathedral whose every stone the 
 Boy knew and loved. St. Missolin had aided in the de- 
 fense of his country against the Vandals, his life the 
 price of his patriotism. Honored as a saint as far back 
 as Gregory of Tours, Tarbes had become a place of 
 pilgrimage, and the Boy had grown up in an atmos- 
 phere of simple faith, a faith strong and impregnable. 
 That faith and serene fearlessness of Bayard was the 
 ideal knight upon which the lad strove to pattern his life ; 
 and with those qualities he possessed likewise the power 
 of tireless intellectual effort, the will and the eager wil- 
 lingness to learn, the dependability, the concentrated 
 force, the brevity, the crystalline clarity of vision stamp- 
 ing him truly great. 
 
 To the Boy on this haze-hung August morning, stand- 
 ing by the range overlooking the Heath of the Moors, the 
 wide plain with its cloud-curtained background of moun- 
 tains, took on a new and deepened significance. He had 
 come down, as was his custom since leaving Tarbes, to 
 Valentine, the picturesque village in the foothills of the 
 Pyrenees, to spend his vacation with his paternal grand- 
 parents, and from there he always found his way back to 
 the white town nestled on the left bank of the Adour, the 
 place of his birth, and where he had spent his childhood 
 until his father's new appointments had taken the family 
 first to Rodez and then to St. Etienne where they were 
 now living. A halo of romance enveloped the town for 
 
The Boy Mystic of Gascony 253 
 
 the Boy. Through its streets one caught glimpses of the 
 mountains, heard the sound of running water, and, in the 
 spring, there came the odor of apple orchards heavy with 
 bloom. Many a time as a tiny lad wandering about the 
 Heath of the Moors, he had seen a peasant plow out a 
 skull of some Frenchman or Saracen who had fought to 
 the death on that very plain, those same forces in conflict 
 in that age of budding chivalry as now, evil in the end 
 being crushed out at the price of sacrifice, an age-old 
 struggle that will never relax until time is not. Here too, 
 he had listened to the old men and women weaving their 
 tales of the keeping of the anniversary of that battle, the 
 twenty-fourth of May, as it had been celebrated until 
 the Revolution, and how at the southern end of the battle- 
 field had stood a colossal equestrian wooden statue of the 
 warrior priest, St. Missolin, about which had gathered the 
 girls of the vicinity singing and crowning the statue with 
 garlands. 
 
 Following the road of romance still further, the lad 
 saw in imagination Charlemagne and his twelve knights 
 pass through Tarbes with his stalwart army and across 
 this same Heath of the Moors into Spain to fight again 
 against the Saracens, this time to go down to defeat if 
 only for a time. Among those knights of Charlemagne, 
 the name of gallant Roland stands out, defying time, 
 Roland, who with his good sword Durandal clove the 
 Breach of Roland, so cutting a pass through the Pyrenees 
 for the fleeing army; in proof thereof, Roland's horse 
 leaving his iron-shod hoof -print in the rock. The mem- 
 ory of Roland was to this lad of Gascony more than a 
 tradition. He was a living personality, an ideal of Chris- 
 tian knighthood, setting a standard to which this embryo 
 soldier was to aspire, bringing out too, that knowledge 
 of the Vandal still lurking behind the eastern mountain 
 
254 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 barrier of France, a Vandal that in two short years was 
 to force an entrance into the Boy's beloved France, a 
 defeat which, though he knew it not, standing that 
 August morning overlooking the Heath of the Moors, 
 was to give definite direction to his life work. When only 
 twelve, while still a student at the College de Tarbes, 
 Ferdinand had revealed himself as having the "stuff of 
 a polytechnician." So his form of service, that of a sol- 
 dier of France, was unfolded to him, a life of service 
 that was not to rest until France should rise in a final 
 triumph over her Vandal foes from across her eastern 
 frontier. The prayer carved by a forgotten hand upon 
 the portal of his school at Tarbes, held for the lad a 
 special meaning; that steadfastness and singleness of pur- 
 pose to carry on until accomplishment. "May this house 
 remain standing until the ant has drunk all the waves of 
 the sea, and the tortoise has crawled round the world," 
 the prayer ran, and it became in later years the Boy's 
 passionate prayer for France. 
 
 The Boy's family life was of that unity, simplicity and 
 beauty so truly French, and throughout his whole life 
 the influence of his home had borne its indelible im-. 
 press, an atmosphere that Ferdinand and his brothers and 
 sister felt also at Valentine, where they spent their va- 
 cation with their grandparents, a life set in the beauty 
 of holiness, the majestic beauty of the hills and that 
 inner spiritual beauty of lives lived near to God. Re- 
 ligion was to the lad as the air he breathed, the natural 
 expression of man to God. Inheritance, tradition was 
 the foundation upon which he was to build, a spiritual 
 conception of life that was to enable him to endure and 
 to rise triumphant, turning defeat into victory. It was 
 the human element, likewise, in his conception of life, 
 of war, as a passionate drama, an element materialism 
 
The Boy Mystic of Gascony 255 
 
 overlooks, that gave him the power of broad understand- 
 ing, of tender sympathy fused with vision crystal clear, 
 that was the highwater mark of his greatness, making him 
 unconquerable in France's supreme hour of need. 
 
 The old castle of the Counts of Bigorre, of which the 
 tower of Marguerite de Beam alone remains, held its 
 romance also for the lad, a nigh forgotten history cling- 
 ing to its scarred sides even as the century-grown ivy. 
 Here local history had played its part, and here also the 
 English had come in the old days, the lad's hero, the 
 Black Prince, about whom he wove many a colorful 
 romance, this chivalrous knight worthy to draw sword 
 with those of France. 
 
 August and November were the months Ferdinand 
 loved best; for in August was held the Concours Hip- 
 pique ; in November, November eleventh, the day that in 
 after years was to sum up the final triumph of this 
 saviour of France, the Grande Semaine des Courses took 
 place, these two events marking days of keen delight to 
 the Boy. Since babyhood, Ferdinand had been a fear- 
 less rider, full of the ardor of the chase, so characteris- 
 tically French, loving horses passionately. More than 
 that, these horse races, and horse fairs that took place in 
 the Place Forail, brought the world to Tarbes, that world 
 of which the lad dreamed, and for which he had all his 
 life been reaching toward; for since his master at the 
 College de Tarbes had recognized in the lad of twelve a 
 genius for geometry and logic, Ferdinand was destined 
 for the army, to serve the third Napoleon as his grand- 
 father had served the first. A greater fate destiny held 
 for the Boy, a wider, truer service ; for his service was 
 to be for France, for a world-wide democracy, for hu- 
 manity, a service which he was to meet supremely, thus 
 saving to the world freedom and civilization, democracy 
 
256 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 and that ideal of unity in variety so essential to the 
 wholeness of the world. Into the quiet backwater of 
 Tarbes a stream of people flowed in from the Pyrenees, 
 from Provence, from the Basque country, from Navarre, 
 from Beam, a motley crowd of varied type in costume 
 and picturesqueness, a mosaic in color and character leav- 
 ing its impress upon the Boy whose after life was to be 
 set among the men of all France, and whom he would un- 
 derstand because of his intimate contact with them and 
 with their racial characteristics, a contact that would 
 make for close communion, for instant response. On fair 
 days the lad loved to wander about under the plane trees 
 in the Place Forail watching these men of infinite variety 
 bargaining and showing off their horses, some bragging, 
 some careless, laughing, others full of southern fire; each 
 with the human touch making them kin. Full of sym- 
 pathy, of innate understanding, the lad, all unknowing, 
 learned to know men ; and from them he also learned of 
 the world outside, that world into which he was going, 
 and of which he was to be a part ; for the Boy was pos- 
 sessed of the sensitiveness of the artist, who, absorbing, 
 reflects impressions as a finely tuned 'cello vibrates 
 sound. Temperament as well as character was his; for 
 he inherited the nerves of supple steel inherent in the 
 Basque, his education at Metz whither he was going, to 
 instill in him the calm will of Lorraine, that tenacity of 
 purpose that carries on until accomplishment, a fighting 
 spirit fused with vision, a vision crystal clear in which 
 there was no clouding of issues. 
 
 Like most French bourgeois, Ferdinand's parents were 
 thrifty and hard working, doing their utmost to give this 
 eldest son of theirs a liberal education, no sacrifice too 
 great to prepare him for the service of France ; for with 
 French perspicacity, they recognized the budding gifts in 
 
The Boy Mystic of Gascony 257 
 
 the lad, setting him in a sense apart, dedicating him to 
 France, even as they gave their second son to the Church. 
 It is this sense of service bred in every Frenchman, that 
 made France strong in the blackest hour of her history, 
 that sense that each man owes to France his best, no 
 sacrifice too great in her service. So Sophie Dupre and 
 her husband gave, and so they prepared their son Fer- 
 dinand for a life of service, a life demanding not only a 
 high sense of duty and discipline, but complete self-mas- 
 tery, complete self-effacement. The lad's passionate, 
 silent nature gave to France as he gave to his mother, a 
 deep, reverent worship, a love that knew no measure, that 
 forgot self in the joy of giving. 
 
 Standing there by the paddock in the soft August sun- 
 light, the Boy thrilled at the thought of this service he 
 was to enter upon at Metz in a few weeks. A lonely life 
 he knew it would be, a life of struggle, of self-denial, of 
 preparation that he might be ready when France called 
 him. This was to be the vision of his ideal which was to 
 keep the hard, strenuousness and monotony of the daily 
 grind from becoming the monotony of life. Self-reliance 
 too, this life of self-discipline was to teach him, a self- 
 knowledge giving him confidence to play his own hand, 
 this confidence in himself, devoid of egotism; for his con- 
 fidence was founded on a great faith, even as he was to 
 recognize his gifts as from God. The light in his gray- 
 blue eyes portrayed an inner illumination of soul that 
 would mellow and deepen with the years. 
 
 The crunching of a heavy cavalry boot made the Boy 
 turn swiftly, his face flushing with pleasure and eager- 
 ness as he saw his old friend the sergeant approaching, a 
 saddle and bridle on his arms. They saluted. 
 
 "Now, monsieur Ferdinand ! Let us see what you can 
 do with the Arab yonder." 
 
258 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 The horse came winnowing toward them, the Boy 
 fondling him with that fearless love all animals recognize 
 quickly. Like an arrow the Boy shot lightly up into the 
 saddle, and the horse like his young master, all gentleness 
 yet all fire, was aquiver to be gone. A word from the 
 Boy, and they sped across the wide flowing Heath of 
 the Moors, horse and rider as one, the figure of the Boy 
 on horseback lingering long in the sergeant's mind, a 
 figure graceful, lithe, commanding, a figure that would 
 hold the eyes of all France, of the world in the days to 
 come, that figure on horseback leading the blue-gray and 
 khaki-clad hosts of civilization against the Vandals, nor 
 pausing until they had fled across the mountains never to 
 return. 
 
JOFFRE— THE BOY OF NEW FRANCE 
 
 STANDING among the grapevines upon the slopes of 
 the Catalanian foothills overhung by the massif des 
 Corbieres, he may at first glance have seemed like other 
 peasantj boys of Catalan, this fair-haired, blue-eyed 
 Joseph Jacques Cesaire, his cap pushed back, his full cor- 
 duroy trousers held in place by a wide red sash, and 
 frayed a little at the bottom, his large hands bronzed and 
 hardened by work in his mother's vineyard under the 
 burning southern sun. Yet as he bent to his task in the 
 purple glow of the Sepember day, there was a suggestion 
 of latent power, of boundless energy and massive force in 
 his powerfully knit frame marking him of different 
 mould from the other peasant boys, making him closely 
 akin to those dark, rugged hills rising behind him tier 
 upon tier, crowned at last by snow-capped Mont Canigou 
 that proud, majestic rears its head into the soft, gray sky. 
 The Boy worked steadily at his grape picking, pausing 
 now and again to stretch himself and straighten out his 
 cramped muscles. It was then his deep blue eyes glowed 
 as he gazed off across the narrow valley of the Agly and 
 the plain of Roussillon to the distant line of blue sea, or 
 grew dreamy as his gaze lingered upon the barren slopes 
 and desolate heights of the century-scarred Pyrenees. Of 
 these naked mountains the Boy never tired, absorbing un- 
 consciously of their calm strength; and often toward 
 evening when his work was done, he would steal away, 
 climbing up to some cloud-hung summit there to lie upon 
 his back and dream, caught in the magic of the reverber- 
 
 259 
 
260 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 ating silence of the hills. From his eyrie he could look 
 down upon ' Rivesaltes enveloped in great plane trees, 
 through the dense foliage of which peered the high clock 
 tower and the church steeple. The little town, nestled in 
 the foothills stood in an oasis of green,, and past its 
 white walls, and beneath the beautiful stone bridge glided 
 the limpid Agly. Slow-moving, despite the melting snows 
 swelling its waters at its source, the river wound its way 
 across the vine-clad plain, in places bordered by a frame- 
 work of reeds ; and so to the Golfe de Lion and the sea. 
 Every inch of it the Boy knew and loved ; for many a day 
 he had spent fishing along its banks, following its wind- 
 ings far up into the hills where it had cut its way through 
 deep clefts that half shut out the sun. 
 
 As the Boy paused beside his half-filled basket, his 
 eyes rested upon Rivesaltes basking in the September 
 light. Gay, laughing it was, like its people, and it too, it 
 came suddenly to the Boy looking down upon it, had ab- 
 sorbed something of the majestic quality of the mountains 
 looming above it, — that same blending of the gay and the 
 austere, antithetic qualities making the perfect balance so 
 typically French. Perhaps that was one reason, though 
 wholly unanalyzed, why the Boy loved the gay, laughing 
 town, its sombreness touched with a Spanish love of 
 color ; for in the Boy the spirit of the gay, laughing town 
 and that of the austere, majestic mountains was subtly 
 blended, his moods as swift-changing as the cloud-swept 
 craggy peaks, his nature sunny, finely tempered, of south- 
 ern intensity coupled with restraint. Hot blooded he was, 
 for like many in that Catalan town, Spanish as well as 
 GasQon blood mingled in his veins; yet this hot blood, 
 was tempered withal by a northern strain, his tall, hand- 
 some great-grandfather having come from the plains of 
 Picardy to woo and win his fiery bride of the Midi. And 
 
The Boy of New France 261 
 
 as is so often true of mountain folk, this hot-headedness 
 was offset by a shrewd matter-of-factness, of a singular 
 dignity and self-possession, giving the Boy that patient 
 coolness and endless perseverance which in later years 
 would stamp him a great general — the man who would 
 save France. It was the dashing figure of his soldier great 
 grandfather about whom the Boy wove a halo of ro- 
 mance ; and as a child he would sit in the long winter eve- 
 nings at his grandmother's knee by the open fire listening 
 to her tales, tales told in the Catalan tongue spoken in 
 those parts, of his gallant ancestor's daring deeds not 
 only in the service of the king, but more stirring still, 
 deeds done in defense of a people's rights ; for this sturdy 
 soldier from Pieardy all his life served the cause of 
 democracy even more loyally than that of the king. Both 
 he could serve, in so much as the kings of France sided 
 more often with the people of Pieardy, though purely 
 for self-interest, than with their tyrannical bishops. So 
 the ideal of democracy came to the Boy as an inheri- 
 tance, an ideal that he was to nurture, to cherish and to 
 guard sacredly against the hour when France should 
 be called to fight to the death for an ideal which in that 
 hour would prove as never before a living reality. This 
 inborn passionate devotion to this ideal of democracy, was 
 awakened in him by his grandmothen 
 
 "Love of one's fellows, it is to recognize that they too 
 have rights, Joseph Jacques," she would say to him, her 
 hand on his fair curls. "Fight for it always as thou 
 wouldst fight for thy very soul. I have heard thy great- 
 grandfather tell of how the streets ran red in Paris 
 during the Revolution, — the price of a people's freedom. 
 I myself know the oppression that followed and the suf- 
 fering of the people because of Napoleon." 
 
 "Napoleon was a great general," the Boy would in- 
 
262 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 terrupt, his eyes on fire. "He brought glory to France." 
 
 "Aye, perhaps ; but he forgot the people who had given 
 him power. His power vanished like the mist on Cani- 
 gou. As to the glory — ? It was the way of the Cross 
 he made France follow." 
 
 "I would be a great general like Napoleon," the Boy 
 persisted, still dazzled by the glitter of Napoleon's deeds. 
 
 "Thou !" the old woman laughed. "Thou, the cooper's 
 son! Yet Napoleon was but an upstart after all," she 
 added thoughtfully. Then after a pause : "A soldier thou 
 may'st be ; but remember this always. One can be a great 
 general like Napoleon, yet fight for the people. It is that 
 will win glory for thyself and France." 
 
 These talks with his grandmother were not forgotten 
 by the Boy, sinking deep into his soul to bear fruit later 
 when the soldier's blood stirring in him, he should bend 
 all his ambitions and- his energy to prepare himself for 
 the life which from babyhood had called him; and with 
 it grew to blossoming the passionate love of his life, 
 New France, whose spirit was the life-blood of her 
 people. As this dream of a soldier's life deepened in him, 
 the Boy grew more reticent about it, speaking of it rarely 
 save to his grandmother and to a white-haired soldier 
 who had seen service in the Crimea, and who came yearly 
 to Rivesaltes during the vintage, a chance meeting des- 
 tined to influence the Boy's entire future career. Rive- 
 saltes, its prosperity dependent upon its vineyards, was 
 given over in September to the wine merchants who came 
 thither at that season from all over France to lay in 
 their stores for the coming year, and to gage the yield 
 and the quality of the muscatel grapes ready for the 
 harvest. The inns were full, the streets astir as in fair 
 time ; for the peasants, their costumes enlivened with gay 
 splashes of color, their horses also bedecked in high- 
 
The Boy of New France 263 
 
 peaked collars from which fell a kind of veil, flecked with 
 red or green, poured into the town from the whole coun- 
 tryside, bringing their harvest of grapes to be appraised 
 and sold in the market place. It was a season that de- 
 lighted the Boy, this inundation of the outer world into 
 the little town of the Pyrenean foothills, bringing in with 
 it new currents and a taste of that world lying beyond 
 the mountains, which with burning curiosity be longed to 
 penetrate. Did he not love these stark sombre moun- 
 tains ? Ah ! yes, with a passion that would hold him al- 
 ways, that would lure him back to their snow-capped 
 peaks all his life ; but they had also grown to be a symbol 
 of the struggle lying before him, of the steep, rough ways 
 he must follow before he reached the heights whither 
 his vision carried him. Life in the valley of the Agly 
 with its mingled tears and laughter, of gaiety and ma- 
 jestic somberness would be the deep setting against 
 which the broader life across the mountains would be 
 thrown, the sheltered life of the valley deep rooted in 
 the soil which for generations his ancestors had tilled 
 and cultivated with loving care. Productive, this life 
 of the soil, of the simple directness and sturdy char- 
 acter, the massive, vigorous force and gentle, sunny 
 temper, those moral and intellectual qualities portraying 
 his brains and his character in perfect equilibrium. It 
 was the Sepember he was nine that he had seen the old 
 soldier who was to fully awaken in him his desire to 
 go beyond the mountains, and that was now three years 
 ago. This keen-eyed veteran of the Crimea had been 
 seated in the entrance of one of the large wine cellars 
 when the Boy had passed with his father, Joffre the 
 cooper as he was called. Something in the Boy's un- 
 gainly figure and intelligent sunny face had attracted the 
 man, and he had called the boy to him. Thus began a 
 
264 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 friendship that for Joseph Jacques opened up a new 
 world, setting his imagination on fire. His keen in- 
 telligence, his modest unaggressiveness, his gentle court- 
 esy coupled with a quiet force, appealed to the shrewd 
 white-haired man, who recognized in the boy of nine 
 qualities unusual, and holding promise of great things. 
 Gradually he had drawn the boy out until the Boy had 
 laid bare his heart's desire to lead a soldier's career. 
 It pleased the man's fancy to encourage this longing. 
 He spun him tales taken here and there from many a 
 glorious page of France's history, dwelling upon the 
 industry demanded of even her greatest generals before 
 reaching the heights of achievement. 
 
 "To arrive means industry, Joseph, unceasing, unre- 
 mitting toil. The higher we aim, the harder must we 
 work to attain. To be a commander of an army is not 
 to sit around in epaulets and gold lace giving orders. It 
 means forgetfulness of self, the sinking of personal 
 desire for the larger end. Real sacrifice is needed to 
 truly serve one's country; and France has need of such 
 men." 
 
 The words sank deep into the Boy's soul. 
 
 "That boy of yours, Joseph, has promise," the soldier 
 said one day to the cooper a year after the Boy and 
 he had become friends. "He must have his chance. 
 Send him to Perpignan when his schooling is done here." 
 
 "He is but one of eleven, monsieur. He must work 
 like the rest," the cooper answered sadly, "or the pot 
 will cease to boil." 
 
 "He is a lad of much promise. It is worth the sacri- 
 fice. Some day when he is a great general, you will be 
 proud of him. Who knows but that some day he may 
 save France." 
 
 The cooper's face brightened. 
 
The Boy of New France 265 
 
 "You think that, monsieur? He is but ten. How 
 can one tell so young what the vine will yield?" 
 
 "I am a soldier, monsieur, who has served. Your 
 boy has the qualifications. Next year when I come, tell 
 me you have sent Joseph to Perpignan. Aurevoir." So 
 they had parted each year, only each time the old veteran 
 became more insistent. 
 
 As the Boy filled his basket quickly and methodically, 
 with painstaking industry, he was dreaming over this 
 future of his that with the late autumn would begin to 
 be realized ; for he had won the right to go to Perpignan 
 largely through his own industry, working in the vine- 
 yard through the long summers. The schoolmaster at the 
 Rivesaltes school had been as quick as the soldier to 
 note the intellectual keenness in the boy, his clear, logical 
 thinking especially in mathematical problems, and he had 
 not only encouraged the Boy to continue his studies, but 
 had brought his influence to bear on Joseph Jacques' 
 father ; the cooper finally yielding to this double pressure, 
 pride in the growing ability of the Boy manifesting it- 
 self more and more as he saw the patient industry and 
 endless perseverance of his son displayed in accom- 
 plishing the monotonous daily tasks as well as in those 
 things which would lead him nearer to his land of heart's 
 desire. The future of France lay with her people, and 
 the humble cooper of Rivesaltes took pride in his son 
 who even then was destined to give himself in service 
 for France; and whom at a sacrifice the father was 
 fitting for that service. Joseph Jacques, dreaming of 
 his future as he filled his basket on the hillside, re- 
 called every word of the talk he had had the evening 
 before with his old friend, a talk so pregnant with his 
 future. 
 
266 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 "Joseph Jacques you are on your way," were the 
 words with which his friend had greeted him. 
 The Boy, flushing with pleasure, had answered: 
 "Yes, monsieur. I go to Perpignan this autumn." 
 "You stood well in your class, I hear." 
 "In all but German, monsieur. I can never speak a 
 tongue so barbaric." 
 The soldier laughed. 
 
 "It is a language you may have need of when you 
 are a soldier." 
 The Boy flashed back one of his merry smiles. 
 "It is not language, but mathematics I shall need when 
 that time comes, monsieur; and for mathematics I have 
 a pencher." 
 
 "After Perpignan, what then, Joseph ?" 
 "The Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, monsieur." 
 "Truly you aim high. It is well; but entrance there 
 is difficult. It is competitive." 
 
 "It is there I must go, monsieur, if I am to be an 
 officer in the service of France." 
 
 "You have set your path among the steep mountain 
 heights. It is a lonely way, but someday you will be 
 called to do some giant task for France. Work for that 
 day as if it were to come to-morrow. Then you'll be 
 ready when the hour strikes. Remember this, that no 
 detail is too unimportant to slip over. It was a maxim 
 of Napoleon, this. In his mastery of detail lay the seeds 
 of his success. When I come next year, you shall tell 
 me of Perpignan. Aurevoir." 
 
 So the two friends, the grizzled soldier and the fair- 
 haired boy, had parted for another year, the Boy going 
 home in the soft falling dusk, his heart on fire, his imag- 
 ination kindled afresh. Yet with all this intensive glow- 
 ing at the heart, this burning thought of the goal to 
 
The Boy of New France 267 
 
 which his life was now tending, the Boy gave little out- 
 ward expression save in the deepening glow in his eye, 
 or the quivering of his nostrils, a sensitive revealing of an 
 emotion stirring him characteristic likewise when he 
 was swayed by righteous anger against cruelty, oppres- 
 sion or injustice in any form whether toward man or 
 beast. There was none of the loud-talking braggard 
 nor the bombast of the Midi about this self-contained 
 Boy of Catalan. He had learned, too, self-discipline 
 early, holding his fierce southern temper in absolute 
 control. This reticence had in a measure set him apart, 
 even from his brothers and sisters, who did not under- 
 stand their big, ungainly brother though they perforce 
 loved him in their own fashion. Especially the Boy 
 felt this isolation with his mother whom he worshipped, 
 and who gave to this son whom she could not under- 
 stand, a love different and deeper than to the rest of 
 her little brood. 
 
 Yes, the path he had chosen to follow would be steep 
 and rough, the way long, winding and solitary. Yet 
 he would never look back, this fair-haired boy of New 
 France, until he had arrived. Those sublime, austere 
 peaks were calling to him more insistently each year, 
 and he could not rest until he had answered that call. 
 The story of the old cure of Pierre-Lys of these same 
 Pyrenean mountains, came to him, a story his soldier 
 friend -had told him that first year they had met in the 
 wine cellar at Rivesaltes, the old cure who pick in hand 
 had worked with his people cutting a road through the 
 mountain — the Trou du Cure it is called — and so had 
 opened for them the world beyond their mountains. The 
 cure had refused a bishopric offered him by Napoleon, 
 a lover of good roads and roadmakers, preferring to die 
 with the people to whom he had ministered all his life. 
 
268 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 "You, too, will cut your way across the mountains, 
 Joseph Jacques," the old soldier had said to him; "but 
 for you life calls beyond the mountains. You will come 
 back, yes; but never to stay. Your work lies yonder. 
 It is there you will serve France." 
 
 So now it was to be. The path was opening at his 
 feet, and the Boy was ready. 
 
 The basket was full, and as the Boy reached the end 
 of the row, he paused and straightened himself, gazing 
 off intently, lost in the beauty encircling him. Along the 
 vine-clad slopes, and across the plain covered by inter- 
 minable rows, the young leaves of the vines were tinted 
 by the deep red gold of the setting sun. To the north- 
 west, the aride massif des Corbieres stood out picturesque 
 and sublimely melancholy in their broken lines; to the 
 south, the Alberes pale blue against the gray of their 
 cloud-hung summits; while far off toward the sea the 
 white walls of Barcares, the tiny port from whence 
 Rivesaltes ships its wines, lay sparkling, gay and laugh- 
 ing in the gold of sunset. Above all, the white-mantled 
 summits of Mont Canigou, half-hid by low, drifting 
 clouds, gave the touch of sublimity that stirred the Boy 
 to his very depths, filling his soul with the strength of 
 those tireless, storm-swept hills. With a sigh of content, 
 the Boy swung his basket piled high with luscious grapes 
 upon his shoulder, and started down the hillside toward 
 the valley. To-night, he would return to the valley of 
 the Agly, but to-morrow he would leave the gay laugh- 
 ing valley and the sun-drenched plain of Roussillon for 
 the austere sublimity of those cloud-hung summits loom- 
 ing far above him in the violet dusk. In that moment, i 
 though he knew it not, as he picked his way down the 
 steep path to the valley, across the mountains there 
 stirred the first breath of the dawn of an awakening 
 France. 
 
BRUSILOFF— THE BOY OF THE CAUCASUS 
 
 IN the soft, cloud-hung July dawn the lithe figure 
 of a boy on horseback moved swiftly along the mili- 
 tary road that threads its way through the wild beauty of 
 the narrow gorge of the Terek, and upward to the bleak 
 plateau of the upper Terek Valley. Far above him, as 
 the dawn brightened into day, the Boy caught now and 
 again glimpses of jagged ridges, of vast pitiless slabs oT 
 unbroken granite and glistening pinnacles of ice-glazed 
 crags. Deep gullies gashed the walls of rock hemming 
 in the gorge, silent with the majestic silence of the moun- 
 tains, save for the surging music of the torrent edging 
 the road, the song of birds and the occasional boom of a 
 distant avalanche crashing down from some serac-swept 
 height. 
 
 At a bend in the road, the Boy Alexei Alexeievitch 
 drew rein to look back down the valley from whence he 
 had come, his restless hunter's eyes alight, fused with 
 the eager keenness of a dauntless spirit and the penetra- 
 tive vision of the mystic. The green tunic which he wore 
 became his slim, graceful figure. Spurs and boots 
 and a cap of green cloth edged with fur set jauntily 
 upon his head completed his rich but simple costume. 
 The gun slung over his shoulder betokened his early 
 morning errand ; that of the huntsman seeking his quarry 
 in the lair. His horsemanship bespoke his Cossack breed- 
 ing; for from babyhood the boy had been cradled in the 
 saddle. His indefinable oneness with nature, with those 
 snow-crowned Caucasian peaks, was likewise subtly sug- 
 
 269 
 
270 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 gested by the quivering joy of the Boy's face and figure 
 as he sat astride his horse looking down through the thick 
 forested slopes to the green of pasture lands in the 
 smiling, sunlit valley; his gaze held longest though, by 
 the soaring, snow-capped crags above him. To him even 
 then, boy as he was, these mountains signified struggle, 
 the thrill of battling against giant, elemental forces, odds 
 unsurmountable save for that spiritual element within 
 that has ever had power to overcome mere brute strength. 
 Above all, these mountains symbolized for him spiritual 
 strength, that peculiar gift of the hills to those who look 
 up to them. As he pushed his way further up the gorge, 
 the Boy's eyes turned with special intentness upon those 
 half veiled heights; for with his fifteenth birthday, his 
 free happy life among the mountains which he loved 
 with all the intensity of his Cossack nature, would, for 
 a time, be over. He was destined to begin his military 
 education in one of the renowned Russian military 
 schools, his military career coming to him as an inherit- 
 ance not only from his distinguished soldier father, but 
 from the race of Cossack warriors from whom he sprang, 
 even as his birthplace, the Caucasus, was the school 
 of Russian military prowess and skill. Here in these 
 mountain fastnesses for generations the armies of Russia 
 had striven to conquer those valorous, savage tribes- 
 men, especially the Cherkess of the north, the Kurds 
 of the south; and in these wars, the Boy's father had 
 won renown. So heredity, tradition, environment were 
 playing their part in the moulding of the Boy's char- 
 acter as well as his genius. Life as the Boy had known 
 it in these well-loved mountains, had been a hard life, a 
 life of discipline, of constant vigilance against an ever 
 watchful foe; a life, too, set in the elemental largeness 
 and inexpressible beauty, the majesty of windswept peaks 
 
The Boy of the Caucasus 271 
 
 rising sheer and shimmering into the blue haze-hung 
 sky. The Boy's face glowed as he thought of his soldier 
 father, the hero of many a battle with the fierce nomad 
 tribes, and to the Boy the King Arthur of his dreams. 
 Many a winter's night beside a blazing log fire, the Boy 
 had listened breathless while his father spun him tales of 
 his campaigns. Best of all the Boy loved to hear the 
 story of the capture of Schamyl, the rebel Lesghian 
 chief, an event that took place when the Boy was three 
 years old, and which proclaimed the supremacy of the 
 Russian arms in the Caucasus. There was something in 
 the romantic figure of this rebel chieftain of Daghestan 
 that fired the imagination of the lad, Schamyl's genius 
 pitted against the might of all the Russias, his savage, 
 untamed hordes brought by the force of his personality 
 into a sturdy unity for a common cause, — freedom. 
 Love of freedom, democracy, came to the Boy as part 
 of his Cossack heritage; for the Don Cossacks of the 
 Terek Valley were democratic in their government, every 
 man having the chance at the yearly election to serve 
 even in the post of Hetman. Living among hostile 
 tribes these outpost warriors of the Tzars originated a 
 peculiar military organization, forming either a cordon 
 of military settlements along the confines of the oc- 
 cupied country, or as isolated camps in the nomad coun- 
 try beyond. Thus to the Boy captivity had always been 
 abhorrent, and to the captive Lesghian chief, despite 
 his being an enemy, his boy heart went out in silent 
 sympathy; for to him freedom was the priceless gift of 
 life itself. Often the Boy's father had told him of an 
 early ancestor of his who, before the days of Peter the 
 Great, had won fame as a soldier in these southern tracks 
 beyond the dominion of the Moscow Tzars, before what 
 is now Cossack country had been embodied in the Rus- 
 
272 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 sian Empire. So each generation had added to the 
 family's military renown, the sum of this noble heritage 
 handed down to be built upon and added to, a sacred 
 trust that must be guarded and enriched. 
 
 "We must live up to our traditions, lad," Alexei the 
 father had said to the Boy one day as they rode along 
 this very pass. "One cannot do less than one's forebears. 
 One must always hand down an heritage enriched. Soon 
 you will be starting out on your career as a soldier. You 
 must not fall short of the family ideal." 
 
 "To be a soldier. It is that I most desire," the Boy 
 had flashed back. 
 
 The noble life of a soldier was inbred in the child, his 
 whole life from babyhood fashioned and moulded for 
 that career. This life was one of stern discipline, of 
 inuring the Boy to hardship that in later years would give 
 him power to endure, that would steel him to bear the 
 overpowering weight of responsibility his country would 
 lay upon him; for he was possessed of the boundless 
 energy of his loved mountains, that energy of soul which 
 is the very breath of life. 
 
 On and on up the gorge the Boy made his way, nor did 
 he pause again until he reached a rude kosh of unhewn 
 stone roofed with great pine branches, this goatherd's 
 hut perched upon a steep and set amid a vast acreage of 
 unbroken granite, a wilderness of rock devoid of trees, 
 a low scrub growth the pasturage of goats and sheep. 
 As the Boy dismounted, a short stocky man clad in sheep 
 skins came out of the hut greeting the boy. 
 
 "You are welcome, excellency. Milk, warm from the 
 goat, and bread and cheese await your pleasure." 
 
 The Boy gaily tossed the rein to the goatherd exclaim- 
 ing: "I love it best up here, Mikailovitch, Someday I 
 too will herd goats upon the mountain." 
 
The Boy of the Caucasus 273 
 
 Mikailovitch shook his head, a broad smile upon his 
 rugged visage as they entered the hut. 
 
 "For you the open road, little master, not the goat's 
 trail upon the mountain summits." 
 
 "It is the life I love best," the Boy re-iterated swiftly. 
 "Here one is free." , v 
 
 "One can keep one's soul free even upon the plains," 
 the man answered with the characteristic simplicity and 
 directness of mountain folk. "Though here one seems 
 nearer God," he added softly. 
 
 The Boy did not answer, but the words sunk deep, 
 and long afterwards in the stress of battle they came 
 back to him vividly. He had learned then that God 
 like freedom dwells first in a man's soul, that a man 
 must dominate his environment while he looks unto the 
 hills. 
 
 The Boy picked up his rifle and went out followed by 
 the goatherd, pausing far up the trail upon the edge of 
 the cliff to gaze up at towering Elbruz rising like a snow- 
 clad sentinel above the pass, Elbruz, among whose crags 
 tradition records Prometheus was chained, Elbruz clad 
 in primeval snows, a world of mountains in itself, its 
 radiant summits mingling with the heavens. Through a 
 soft veil of fleece clouds huge masses of black rock 
 rose from the intermediate plain, their dark brows throw- 
 ing into relief the dazzling peaks above them. Here, 
 again, tradition has it, the ark of Noah floated over 
 these mountains on its way to Mt. Ararat, smiting the 
 head of Elbruz with its keel, the cleft made in the moun- 
 tain bearing witness to the truth of this tale that is 
 handed down by the mountain folk. 
 
 "The giant's bones, you have seen them, Mikailovitch ?" 
 the Boy questioned, abruptly pointing upward to the 
 smaller summit of the looming mountain. 
 
274 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 "Yes, yes, little master. They He there bleached and 
 weathered by the sun and ice for all to see the power 
 of the divine wrath." The goatherd crossed himself as 
 he spoke. 
 
 "Someday I will go with you to see them. It is here 
 we wait for the mountain goats ?" 
 
 "They cross the trail some twenty paces from here." 
 
 As the Boy lay waiting for the game, he fell to dream- 
 ing of his future, a future family tradition had carved 
 out for him ; for after his schooling at the military school, 
 he, because of his Cossack blood, would of necessity enter 
 the Tver Dragoons, a regiment as permanently fixed in 
 the Caucasus as the British regiments in northwest India. 
 Dashing adventure and the dull routine of his military 
 calling, the daily round enlivened by hunting and steeple 
 chases would be his lot. Everything that would bring 
 out the daring in the lad was encouraged, and with 
 this daring was developed likewise initiative, quickness 
 of thought, resource within oneself so that to act 
 quickly in moments of danger became second nature to 
 the Boy Alexei Alexeievitch. In preparation for this 
 life he was to lead, the Boy was taught early the value 
 of hard discipline, of instant obedience, of the subservi- 
 ence of personal desires to those of others. Above all 
 he was imbued with the nobility of service to his country 
 to whom his whole life was to be pledged. 
 
 "Those who command others must never spare them- 
 selves," his father said to him one day. "Never ask 
 of your men what you would not do yourself. It is the 
 mark of a good general." 
 
 Thus from babyhood the Boy was inculcated with the 
 fine essence of democracy, a democracy that would 
 reach out in true brotherliness to those with whom he 
 came in contact. So in after years when the respon- 
 
The Boy of the Caucasus 275 
 
 sibility of a general was placed upon him, personal knowl- 
 edge of his men marked his power to do with them 
 what he would. Belief in him was paramount, because 
 they knew not only his courage, but his willingness to 
 share their hardships, his refusal to enjoy comforts 
 denied them. 
 
 As Alexeievitch lay there dreaming of his future, 
 there broke in upon his consciousness the restless surge 
 of the mountain torrent far below him. The Boy crossed 
 himself; for inbred in him was the belief of these 
 dwellers of the mountains in the power of the super- 
 natural in nature, the spirit dwelling in the winds and 
 the rivers a force to be reckoned with and propitiated. 
 Dwelling among the mountains had developed in the Boy 
 an elemental quality, giving ruggedness and splendid 
 vigor to his character, offsetting the gentleness and fine 
 courtesy of his aristocratic breeding and upbringing. 
 Thus was he finely balanced, and thus he had absorbed 
 these folk tales of the mountain people, their simple 
 belief in offerings to propitiate the spirit of the river 
 mingling with the deep religious faith inherent in the 
 Boy. Stretched upon the rocky ledge, he recalled the 
 ancient story of the Don Cossack insurgent chief, Stenka 
 Razin, who in a moment of fervid devotion flung the 
 beautiful captive Persian princess whom he loved into the 
 Volga, exclaiming: "Oh mother Volga! much hast thou 
 given me of gold and silver and of all good things. I 
 have in no way shown my gratitude. Here is something 
 for thee! Take it!" Again, there flashed upon his 
 vision the tale of a youth who derided the swift moun- 
 tain torrent he was fording, and in a flash was swept 
 from his horse and drowned in the swirling waters. 
 
 Above all there was the story of Ivan of which he 
 never tired of hearing, a tale told him one stormy night 
 
276 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 by the goatherd after Mikailovitch had rescued the lad 
 upon the mountain side. Alexeievitch had been caught 
 by the swift autumn darkness and so missed the trail. 
 His prolonged absence alarmed the faithful goatherd, 
 and he had gone out seeking for him until he found him. 
 So late was it that the lad was forced to spend the 
 night in the kosh with his humble friend, and as they sat 
 before the fire, the herdsman had told him of Ivan the 
 young prince who saved his mother from Vikhor the 
 Whirlwind. Ivan was the youngest of three sons who 
 set out to free their captive mother. Vikhor dwelt among 
 the mountain fastnesses; he lurked in the green furrows 
 of the sea. His road was the path of his desire, his 
 wanderings the breadth and length of the world; for 
 this wind blew where it listeth, nor could one tell from 
 whence it came, nor whither it was going. The trail 
 to the haunt of Vikhor the Whirlwind was a trail steep, 
 winding, solitary and beset with grave difficulties and 
 dangers, — dangers that to the hearts of Ivan's two elder 
 brothers brought discouragement; for they listened to 
 those who had gone before them and who had failed. So 
 they turned back, leaving Ivan to finish the task alone. 
 Ivan was of sterner metal, and his stout heart, though 
 it quailed often as he crossed some desolate, serac-swept 
 height of the snow-clad summits, or made his way 
 through a sunless gorge, yet it never faltered. He went 
 on to accomplishment. His vision, illumined by a great 
 love, led him forward without a thought of turning back 
 until his goal was reached, the object of his quest, the 
 rescue of his mother, fulfilled. From a little man of the 
 mountain he had learned that the haunt of the Whirl- 
 wind was a dark cave in which stood two giant urns, 
 one filled with the waters of weakness, the other with 
 the waters of strength. Upon his enemies Vikhor forced 
 
The Boy of the Caucasus 277 
 
 the waters of weakness, while he partook of the waters 
 of strength, thus overcoming them. 
 
 "Change the urns," the little man admonished Ivan on 
 parting, "and you will conquer this Vikhor, the scourge 
 of the mountains. Remember when the struggle between 
 you comes, do not look back, but keep your face toward 
 the light." 
 
 So Ivan conquered Vikhor the Whirlwind, and saved 
 his mother whom he worshipped. This story marked a 
 turning point in the Boy's career, for by it he, all uncon- 
 sciously, began to mould his philosophy of life. To drink 
 of the waters of strength, those waters flowing from out 
 the heart of the hills, and never to look back, to keep 
 one's face toward the light, the realization of the quest, 
 were the things lying fallow in this Cossack Boy of 
 the Caucasus, this embryo soldier. These were the quali- 
 ties that would make of him some day a great general ; 
 for love of his mother Russia was the inborn passion 
 of his life, Russia, who in her hour of need he would 
 rescue even as Ivan his mother, from Vikhor the Whirl- 
 wind. 
 
 As he lay there waiting, the Boy's mind was full of 
 the new life opening before him, life beyond the moun- 
 tains that he loved. His sensitive mouth quivered at 
 the thought of leaving his beloved mountains, and with 
 them his family and his friends, the goatherd yonder, 
 and the dark-haired Olga, whose beauty had already 
 cast a spell about the lad. Then there was Vladimar, 
 whose road would later lead also out for a time into that 
 unknown world beyond the barrier of mountains. As 
 he thought of his mother, the Boy's face grew still and 
 taut, his highly strung nature aquiver, yet held in leash 
 by his iron will, and by a reserve that left unexpressed 
 often the deep things of his soul. It was to his mother 
 
278 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 the Boy owed his sensitiveness to impression, his nervous 
 swift grace of movement, his delicate wit and banter 
 that welled up like one of his own mountain brooks. 
 From her, too, the Boy inherited his mystic quality of 
 mind, his faith in God, in things unseen, a clear-visioned 
 mysticism that sees into those things beyond mere human 
 sight; yet is keen to discern the true from the false, 
 this deep spirituality in him to be the mainspring of his 
 power, the force of his personality founded upon the 
 living reality of his faith that drew its strength from the 
 eternal hills. 
 
 So the day sped by until late afternoon. Then it was 
 the goatherd whispered : 
 
 "See, little master, the goats have come." He pointed 
 to a craggy ledge upon which the leader of the flock stood 
 outlined against the sky. 
 
 For a moment the Boy's eye flashed, and he poised his 
 gun to shoot. Then of a sudden he threw his rifle 
 down. Somehow the goat standing defiant upon the edge 
 of the cliff recalled sharply to the Boy's mind the figure 
 of Schamyl the Lesghian chieftain, his solitary figure 
 facing the might of all the Russias, fighting to the death 
 for his freedom, and he could not shoot. 
 
 Alexeievitch gave a nervous little laugh. 
 
 "Not to-day, Mikailovitch. Let him keep his freedom. 
 He loves it as I do." 
 
 "You have waited all day, and it is a fair shot," the 
 goatherd answered ruefully. "As you will, little master." 
 
 "I will save my bullets to fight for freedom, not to slay 
 a defenceless goat." 
 
 "You love the goats as I do, little master. May your 
 heart not change when you become a great general." 
 
 "When that time comes, I will grow a white beard 
 and wear a long sword," the Boy laughed merrily. 
 
The Boy of the Caucasus 279 
 
 "You will forget the mountains and the goatherd then." 
 "Never my friends nor my mountains, Mikailovitch. 
 When I return I will come and sup with you at the kosh. 
 Come, it grows late. I must return." 
 
 So they made their way, the Boy and the man, back 
 to the kosh the dull gold of afternoon about them, there 
 to partake of tea and unleavened cakes before the Boy re- 
 turned to the Fort from whence in a few weeks his road 
 would lead him across the mountains and beyond into the 
 lowlands where his new life was destined to begin. At 
 the door of the kosh the Boy paused once more to look 
 up at the shimmering summits of Elbruz, thinly veiled 
 now in the gossamer of sun-shot mists. Then with a 
 silent handshake, a, "until I return, Mikailovitch," the 
 two friends parted, the man to tend his flocks upon the 
 desolate mountainside under a canopy of stars; the Boy 
 to wend his way down the gorge into the lowlands that he 
 might fit himself for the service of his mother Russia, 
 Russia to whom his life was pledged, down into the 
 lowlands that he might in very truth aspire and reach 
 the snow-clad heights to which destiny was calling him. 
 
ROOSEVELT— THE BOY AMERICAN OF VISION 
 
 HE stood leaning upon his gun within the shadow 
 of the wooded bluff, looking out across Long Island 
 Sound, a powerfully built, awkward-looking boy, his blue 
 eyes intent upon the unseen distances, his body taut as 
 if alert and waiting even while he dreamed. Virility, pur- 
 posefulness marked the square set of the shoulders of 
 this eighteen year old lad, Theodore Roosevelt, a self- 
 control born of self-discipline, a will dominating the 
 whole vibrant buoyancy of the Boy's nature, that in the 
 days to come was to mark him a great leader of men. 
 Yet this adolescent Boy had not acquired this steel-like 
 purposefulness without effort; for he had been a timid, 
 sickly lad, lacking confidence in himself, fearful, unable 
 to hold his own against boys of hardier temperament 
 and build. Yet by sheer force of will the lad had over- 
 come these defects, not by side-stepping, but by meeting 
 them face to face and conquering them, — his shyness, his 
 lack of confidence, his fear. Thus he was acquiring the 
 habit of fearlessness, and in his power to conquer him- 
 self he was to rise above those who, naturally fearless, 
 have not found their measure; for it is through struggle 
 that men most truly arrive. 
 
 In this resolution to overcome fear, the Boy had been 
 touched first through his imagination, his imagination 
 enkindled by tales of Valley Forge and of Morgan's rifle- 
 men; so his soul, his admiration for gallant deeds done 
 with the quiet courage of men who, without question, 
 
 280 
 
The Boy American of Vision 281 
 
 gave their all in a great cause, deepened by the lad's 
 sensitive response to his heredity, the deeds of his south- 
 ern ancestors stirring his blood, forcing him to rise 
 and make himself worthy of the blood flowing in his 
 veins. The richness of a noble heritage was his, a living 
 example to the Boy, his father, of whom he was to pay 
 an immortal tribute in those words, "he was the best 
 man I ever knew." It was no craven fear gripped the 
 Boy, but a timidity due to physical weakness; for dor- 
 mant, deep down in his nature, a lion courage lay sleep- 
 ing. 
 
 The Boy idolized his father, from whom he inherited 
 strength, that courage with gentleness, that truthfulness 
 and fearlessness in defence of the right, in denunciation 
 of wrong, to be so marked a characteristic of the man 
 to be. From his beautiful southern mother, Theodore 
 came by his keen sense of humor, a humor that was to 
 give illumination to his prophetic vision ; for despite his 
 physical near-sightedness, he saw into the soul of things, 
 beyond the day-bound horizon into the future, making 
 him not only an analyst of existing conditions, but a 
 seer and an interpreter of events still in the hands of the 
 gods. The inherent courage in the lad, and the warm 
 indignation he felt in the presence of wrong or injustice, 
 bubbled up like a spring that, despite its rock-bound sur- 
 face, forces its way up into the sunlight; his will of 
 finely tempered steel overcoming his lack of' confidence, a 
 timidity due to nervousness and outward circumstances 
 rather than to the nature of the lad. Having been a sickly 
 boy, and having lived in consequence much at home, 
 Theodore had not come in contact with the school-boy's 
 rough and tumble life, his lack of physical strength 
 making him indifferent to the physical prowess of which 
 the average boy boasts, and in which he takes over- 
 
282 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 weening pride. Yet his free spirit, stung by his impotence 
 in the face of a bully, roused the Boy to a sense first, of 
 where and how he fell short, and second, of his need to 
 dominate his timidity and shrinking if he was to rise 
 to the ideal of what a man should be, — an ideal set high 
 by the father he loved and reverenced so deeply. Nor 
 was the lad one who, having seen his path, would rest 
 until he had put his resolution into action. Immediately 
 he had set about to make himself physically fit that he 
 might hold his own with his fists actually as well as figura- 
 tively, a thing he was to accomplish not without a tre- 
 mendous exercise of will, this self-discipline to teach him 
 not only control over himself, without which a man is as 
 nothing, but to give him that true freedom of soul which 
 comes only from self-abnegation. 
 
 Standing there looking out across the Sound, the hunt 
 for game and specimens for his natural history collection 
 were forgotten, submerged temporarily in the flood of 
 memories surging in upon the Boy. He had come to his 
 first parting of the ways; for with October he was to 
 enter Harvard, his university career to be the beginning 
 of that broader life of the world of which he was to 
 become so integral and vital a part, a life so different 
 from the sheltered life of the backwater he had hitherto 
 known. Not that the lad had been over guarded or 
 pampered; but he had been delicate, suffering much 
 from asthma, and the deep tenderness he felt for his 
 father had its inception, perhaps, in the gentleness and 
 love with which his father night after night had paced 
 the floor, the gasping boy in his arms, his quiet strength 
 and sympathy soothing the child in his pain. 
 
 Then there had been the episode so different in char- 
 acter when Theodore had been only four, an episode that 
 made the Boy chuckle now as he recalled it. It had been 
 
The Boy American of Vision 283 
 
 a turning point in his whole career, teaching him to 
 discriminate between right and wrong, also instilling in 
 him a lesson in chivalry toward women he never forgot. 
 He had been playing with his sister, and in a moment 
 of childish exuberance had bitten her arm, frightening 
 her to tears. With a smile the lad recalled how, conscious 
 of having committed a crime, he had fled to the yard and 
 thence to the kitchen and his ally, the warm-hearted Irish 
 cook whom he knew would cover his retreat. The cook 
 was kneading dough at the time, and Theodore had crept 
 underneath the table, his tiny fists full of dough, pre- 
 paredness being even then his watchword. Justice in the 
 shape of his father relentlessly pursued the Boy, and 
 after a brief struggle, in which the dough flew, justice 
 was rendered in a manner never to be forgotten by the 
 lad. 
 
 It was the human quality in the Boy that made him so 
 loveable ; for he was full of a healthy mischief normal in 
 a boy, making him understanding in after years of human 
 nature, that large-heartedness in aiding a man to make 
 good after he had paid the penalty for his crime and was 
 desirous of doing better. To aid the repentant sinner 
 is a different matter from condoning evil or from fratern- 
 izing with the criminal still glorying in his crime. 
 
 The Boy's thoughts slipped back to his birthplace, 
 that house at 28 East 20th Street where he had spent his 
 early childhood. A halo of romance still hung oyer it 
 for the lad, its very somberness and severe simplicity 
 enveloping it with a sense of delicious mystery, especially 
 the cut glass chandelier in the parlor with its prisms of 
 magic hues. One day, one of the prisms fell, to be stowed 
 by the lad in a secret hiding place as a veritable find 
 from Treasure Island. The spirit of adventure burned 
 in the lad for all his timidity and lack of assurance. A, 
 
284 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 happy home life Theodore had always known, a life in 
 which each member shared the joys and sorrows of the 
 others, a home in which the father and mother entered 
 into their children's lives, making home their Mecca, the 
 interwoven strand of gold amid the rough and tumble 
 of life. 
 
 The country the Boy had always loved, that freedom 
 of the out-of-doors from early spring when the throstle 
 sings in the brambles to mellowing autumn when the 
 wind whines in the brake. Barefoot, bronzed by sun 
 and wind, Theodore, his brother and sisters, lived an un- 
 trammeled life tinged with the romance of hayfield and 
 woodchuck hunting, of nut gathering and wigwam build- 
 ing in these same chestnut wooded hills where he was 
 now standing, where sunbeams playing among the 
 shadows and bits of blue sea opened up limitless vistas 
 to the lad's imagination. Playing at Indians was a 
 favorite amusement, a game carried to the extremes of 
 realism by applying poke-cherry juice to their faces and 
 hands, and incidently to their clothes, a liberal application 
 trying to their mother whom they adored. The joy of 
 living came to the Boy an inheritance from his father, 
 an exuberant joy in beauty, in being near to nature, in 
 being alive, enabling him to meet and conquer the diffi- 
 culties that were to beset his path. 
 
 The spirit of adventure stirred in the Boy, and it was 
 the books of Marryat and Ballantyne and Longfellow's 
 Saga of King Olaf that caught and held his imagination. 
 The lad's love of nature gave him likewise a naturalistic 
 bent, the beginning of his leaning toward natural history 
 definitely emphasized as marking the beginning of his 
 career as a zoologist, a dead harbor seal lying upon a 
 slab of wood in the market. Theodore had haunted the 
 market after that morning, making endless measurements 
 
The Boy American of Vision 285 
 
 of the creature which he carefully recorded, his first 
 natural history, in simplified spelling, begun under the 
 inspiration of this new obsession. Hopes of possessing 
 and preserving the seal vanished, but eventually the Boy 
 became the proud owner of the seal's skull, thus obtaining 
 the first exhibit for the "Roosevelt Museum of Natural 
 History" which he and his cousins shortly after founded. 
 Thus began the Boy's interest in natural history, a bent 
 encouraged by a wise father and mother, this valueless 
 collection in their eyes the possible foundation for real 
 serious work later on, a faith that was to be fully justi- 
 fied. Theodore remembered well the day he obtained 
 permission from his father to take lessons in taxidermy. 
 His teacher was a Mr. Bell, a onetime companion of 
 Audubon, a fact giving further incentive to the lad to 
 pursue his work, a work that he had taken up with 
 deepening seriousness the following winter in Egypt, bird 
 collecting to be the chief zest of his trip up the Nile. 
 
 This trip to Europe had opened new worlds to Theo- 
 dore, the ancient worlds of Egypt, Greece, Syria and the 
 land of Ali Baba of the Arabian Nights, worlds of 
 historic richness and splendor and Eastern luxuriance, 
 giving breadth of outlook and historic background, the 
 illumination of noble traditions and the manysidedness of 
 peoples and of life. Unconsciously the Boy had ab- 
 sorbed something of that world of ancient glories and 
 grandeur that was to become part of the warp and woof 
 of his character, giving him a keen sense of values, yet 
 intensifying the wholeness of his unadulterated Ameri- 
 canism. He was to grow to know men in all races and 
 classes, his knowledge to be first hand, not founded on 
 theories; for he was to mingle with all sorts and condi- 
 tions and to be recognized by them as a man honest, 
 upright, courageous, one having no mercy on evil, yet 
 
286 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 merciful to the repentant wrongdoer striving to rise above 
 himself, a conqueror. The Boy's Americanism was to be 
 of that peculiarly Anglo-Saxon temper which in mo- 
 ments of grave crisis depends upon instincts rather than 
 intellect; and the Boy's instincts were true, making for 
 greatness in times of grave decision, he acting instantly 
 where reason would delay and so grasping the golden 
 moment because taken at the floodtide. Therein lies 
 the difference between rashness and impulse born of true 
 instincts, this ethical soundness of moral fibre to be the 
 sum of the Boy's inherent greatness. To lend himself to 
 a cause only from conviction, was the keynote of the lad's 
 character, nor would he ever lend himself to arbitrarily 
 defend a subject nor a cause by glib arguments in which 
 he had no belief nor faith in its justice, a practice tend- 
 ing toward loose thinking, placing cleverness above con- 
 viction, bluff above principle. 
 
 To the Boy standing in the shadow of the chestnuts, 
 listening half dreamily to the wind swirling through them, 
 his thoughts focussed upon the new world he was to 
 enter, Harvard to be his gateway to the endless avenues 
 of the great world beyond. His love of nature and the 
 out-of-doors had steadily grown with the years, and thus 
 his interest in natural history, his ambition urging him 
 toward a scientific career patterned after Audubon. It 
 came to him how he had spoken to his father of his 
 longing to seriously take up science as a profession, and 
 his father's hearty acquiescence, delighted in the Boy's 
 love of worth-while things. 
 
 "I have made enough, my Boy," Theodore recalled 
 his father saying, "to enable you to take up such a 
 career and to do non-remunerative work of value, but 
 only provided you are ready to give it your best. I want 
 no dilettantes in my family, Theodore." 
 
The Boy American of Vision 287 
 
 "It's bully of you, father. I mean to put my all into 
 it." 
 
 The Boy could feel the pressure of his father's hand 
 upon his shoulder still, could see the glow in his father's 
 joyous blue eyes, could hear the deepened note in his 
 voice. 
 
 "A scientific career means sacrifice, Boy. It is a life 
 of service, not of money getting." 
 
 The words had sunk deep into the Boy's soul. A 
 life of service! The Boy thrilled at the thought now, 
 the giving of himself to the service of humanity. Yet in 
 this first dedication, how little he dreamed how world- 
 wide that service was to be, a service including not merely 
 science, but statesmanship, the service of his country 
 and the world. A lonely road and rough, a road truly to 
 Calvary, but the only road by which men reach the 
 heights of Olivet and beyond. 
 
 It was the home training the Boy received that fitted 
 him so preeminently for the work toward which Destiny 
 was leading him, that sense of his individual respon- 
 sibility first toward his family, and, as he grew older, to- 
 ward the state, a moral outlook founded upon character, 
 and instilled into him from babyhood. Upon this funda- 
 mental prime necessity, the Boy's moral life was built, 
 this spring of moral purpose making for virility and vigor 
 of soul, a fertile soil in which to emplant the seed of 
 collective responsibility, this need of collective action 
 to be the measure of true democracy. The sinking of self 
 for the common good, was to be the ideal by which the 
 Boy was to interpret service, a service so pure and exalted 
 in the white flame of its selflessness as to reach into 
 the four corners of the earth, a service that was to mean 
 the offering up for his country's sake of his very life 
 blood. The spirit in which he was to serve was of that 
 
288 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 quality that does the task at hand to the utmost of his 
 power, even though that task but opens the way for an- 
 other to carry on. It was because the Boy was to do 
 his work without thought of the future and his own 
 self-aggrandisement, that he was to rise to greatness as 
 statesman, as patriot, as typifying Americanism in its 
 truest, highest sense. 
 
 As he stood there looking out across the Sound, the 
 September sun filtering down through the thick growth 
 of chestnut trees, many avenues of thought revealed 
 themselves. The low hum of early autumn was in the 
 air, and the Boy had come to this spot where the surge 
 of tides lapped the pebbles at his feet, to think things 
 out rather than to hunt or to search specimens for 
 his collection. In a few weeks now he was going to 
 Harvard, and with his going he was leaving behind this 
 old life he had loved and known, a life, nevertheless, 
 that was to be the warp and woof of his being, the green- 
 gold background against which his future was to stand 
 out. Gentleness with courage, unselfishness with 
 strength, clean living and uprightness was the code by 
 which he would steer his course, giving him the true 
 freedom of soul born of self mastery. There under the 
 swaying trees, it came back to him with renewed force, a 
 conversation he had had with his father a few weeks 
 before, when they had been talking about his college 
 career. 
 
 "You are going out into the world, Jaddie. For the 
 first time you will have to meet alone temptations in 
 many forms. Remember always, clean living and hard 
 hitting where wrong is concerned measure the man. 
 There can be no two standards of conduct. What is 
 wrong for a woman is wrong for a man. Do right and 
 you can look the world in the face." 
 
The Boy American of Vision 289 
 
 It was with the thrill of an adventurer Theodore 
 contemplated this new life opening before him. Never 
 having been regularly to school like other boys because of 
 ill-health, it was for him a special testing time, a time 
 when he would be measured up against other men. His 
 teeth snapped together and his jaw set. He must not 
 be found wanting. In part he had conquered his shy- 
 ness and lack of self-confidence. He must go on. All 
 things were possible for him if he but chose to make 
 his day-dreams reality. Danger, his father had taught 
 him was something to be faced and overcome, and his 
 life, while not something to be thrown away, was a 
 pawn to be unhesitatingly hazarded if the hazard was 
 warranted by a great cause. That was to be his ideal 
 of service, an ideal to become the very fibre of his being. 
 It was what he owed his country, to life, not what they 
 owed him, that was its essence, a service born of sacrifice 
 and self-forgetfulness for a great end. 
 
 For a little while the Boy lingered, gazing out upon 
 the whitecapped waters of the Sound, and his jaw 
 stiffened, his blue eyes grew tense. He would conquer 
 despite his physical handicaps ; he would school himself 
 to hold his own in the battle of life. He would prepare 
 himself for whatever the future held, doing the task 
 at hand with all his might, an instrument in the hands 
 of the gods. 
 
 With a quick, restless movement, the Boy slung his gun 
 over his shoulder, turning back along the path he had 
 come, purposeful, strong, facing the future full of the 
 vision that had come to him in the hushed stillness of 
 the autumn woods. As the brown leaves crackled beneath 
 his feet, though he knew it not, he had already turned 
 the first bend in the path that by lonely ways and steep, 
 rough stretches, was to bring him to the heights where 
 
290 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 he would be a leader of men, a man who, in giving his 
 life most truly was to find it; who, because he was true 
 to the vision of his ideal, was to become a mighty patriot, 
 the first American, a world voice. 
 
MACDOWELL— THE BOY CREATOR OF 
 AMERICAN MUSIC 
 
 THE air was heavy with the scent of roses, the soft, 
 warm breeze blowing across the Luxemburg Gar- 
 dens redolent with their perfume, pungent with the odor 
 of rain-soaked earth. Everything was alive and sparkling 
 after the summer shower which had relieved the heat 
 of the sultry, July day, the late afternoon sun shedding 
 its radiance with spendthrift joyousness. Outside the 
 gates, the life of Paris droned by, a soft murmur as of 
 bees drifting into this old world garden without disturb- 
 ing it lying wrapped in the beauty of its traditions, its 
 past. Besides the fountain in the sunken garden, a boy 
 paced restlessly up and down, his strong, boyish face 
 flushed, the delicate whiteness of his skin in marked con- 
 trast to the blue-black of his hair waving back from a 
 forehead broad and intellectual. This Boy, Edward Mac- 
 Dowell, had pocketed his cap as he paced here and there 
 along the allees. For a moment he paused facing the 
 sunset, his eyes of vivid blue and set wide apart, aglow, 
 betraying too that inextinguishable Celtic humor and 
 joyousness, the keynote, really, of his character. His 
 sensitive, full-lipped mouth quivered as if with sup- 
 pressed emotion, an emotion sweeping his mobile face so 
 expressive of many moods, and off -set by the square-cut 
 chin portraying, as it did, the perfect balance essentially 
 his. 
 
 With a quick movement, Edward squared his shoulders 
 and resumed his restless pacing. He had heard Rubin- 
 
 291 
 
292 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 stein that afternoon for the first time, and he had been 
 stirred to his very soul. The throbbing cadences of 
 the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor surged through him, the 
 pain of its tragic beauty gripping him still, urging him 
 to seek out this master musician to learn of him the magic 
 of his interpretation. 
 
 "I can never learn to play like that if I stay here," 
 he had burst out to his mother as they had left the con- 
 cert hall. 
 
 The Boy's heart glowed now remembering his mother's 
 face as she had answered him. Her trust and confidence 
 in this seventeen year old son of hers touched him deeply, 
 making their companionship very close. 
 
 "You are growing restless here. We can go else- 
 where if you think best. Do not decide, though, without 
 due thought. Later we can go over the matter to- 
 gether." 
 
 So the Boy had left her, seeking the quiet beauty of 
 the Gardens he loved so well. He had come to a cross- 
 roads in his career, the whole future dependent upon 
 his present choice. His mind swept back along the road 
 he had come; of his quest from that first day when 
 he was eight years old and Juan Buitraga, hearing him 
 play, had begged to give him lessons. The Boy had 
 hated the drudgery of the daily practicing, and a smile 
 crept into his eyes remembering how, when no eye was 
 upon him, he had spent the practice time for his own 
 compositions, covering his music sheets with sketches 
 revealing a skilful hand and an observing eye. Thus 
 from babyhood, the creative impulse was the dominant 
 characteristic in the lad, the desire to give forth out of 
 the richness of his Celtic imagination. Fairy tales and 
 legendary lore were his delight, those tales which to the 
 Celt hold the mysterious beauty of life, that mystic 
 
Boy Creator of American Music 293 
 
 undercurrent upon which his imagination feeds. Nature 
 to the Boy, was not merely sentient, but alive with 
 spiritual import, bearing upon life itself. Poetry was of 
 the very essence of his being, to be revealed in the music 
 he was later to write, life, nature, to be portrayed in 
 poetic cadences of endless music, music overflowing with 
 spiritual insight. He lived in a world apart, the world 
 of the "little people" of Celtic Ireland and the gray 
 Scotch hills, that world Fiona Macleod has since made 
 real to us in rhythmic prose and verse, as this Boy, 
 Edward, would in his Keltic Sonata reach the highwater 
 mark of his art. Into it, he would breathe that quality 
 of heroic beauty so truly belonging to the ancient Celt, 
 portraying the heroic Gaelic world caught in the sun- 
 drowned mists of the miraculous ; a world of transcendent 
 passions and aspirations, of gods and goddesses, of bards 
 and heroes fired by the adventurous spirit of the quest; 
 a world of green-gold romance through which surged 
 the beauty and the fierceness of great love and stu- 
 pendous hate. Haunting sweetness, that note of poign- 
 ant yearning, of endless seeking, inherent in the Celt, 
 coupled with exquisite tenderness, was to be expressed 
 in this work cast in so heroic a mould. Yet the spirit 
 of Cuchullin the Unconquerable was to be the dominant 
 mood, the spirit of an immortal hour of vision to which 
 he would hold true to the end and beyond, — the heart 
 of the Celt remaining forever unsatisfied, pursuing that 
 which forever lures, yet forever evades. 
 
 Edward came by his imagination and his Celtic sensi- 
 tiveness of temperament, from his father, who had 
 handed down to this third son of his, his rich artistic 
 gifts both as draughtsman and painter, gifts lying 
 dormant in this loved father because of his parents' 
 strict adherence to Quaker belief. Thus did this prac- 
 
294 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 tical business man hand down to his son Edward gifts, 
 aspirations denied him, those gifts of which a Scotch- 
 Irish ancestry made him the heir. Edward's great- 
 grandparents were Belfast born, their son migrating to 
 America in the eighteenth century, bringing with him 
 the cool, hard-headedness of the Scot mingled with the 
 rich, poetic imagination, the sensitiveness of the vision- 
 ing Gael. Race influence, though largely unconscious, 
 perhaps, was potent in the lad, the old Scotch cadences 
 so native to his heart, revealing themselves later in his 
 music, in his outlook on life. The robustness of the 
 Scottish Gael was subtly blended with the evanescent 
 delicacy of the Irish Celt, that mingling of the deep 
 surge of northern tides, of gray seas grim, relentless, and 
 the green-gold beauty of woods alight with sunshine 
 through which filters the joyous song of birds. Dryads 
 and fairies were the daily comrades of this Boy who 
 dwelt much within the recesses of enchanted woods, 
 where fairy boughs were swayed by an unseen wind as it 
 went sighing down the valley, giving forth the haunting 
 music of the ages ; or, where, by a still lake, the swans, 
 children of Lir, at sundown came to rest. Yet the Boy 
 was no mere dreamer. A normal, mischief-loving boy, 
 he belonged also to the world of reality, a reality that is 
 fused with the spirit of romance, that is inseparably 
 bound up with it, that changeless, eternal world of beauty, 
 of a truth, to him the supreme reality. A poet, he was 
 to look inward as well as outward, interpreting with the 
 eye of vision the emotions lying deep in the hearts of 
 men. 
 
 The Boy paused in his walk to watch the play of the 
 fountain as it splashed up into the sunlight. He was 
 in reminiscent mood, even while he pondered upon his 
 future. The old house in Clinton Street where he had 
 
Boy Creator of American Music 295 
 
 been born and had spent his childhood, rose before him. 
 Tears filled the lad's eyes as he thought of the roomy, 
 old-fashioned house, furnished in quiet taste, so per- 
 meated with its atmosphere of gentle breeding, a home he 
 loved, the simple beauty of its environment enveloping 
 him, that beauty of a home where love and mutual trust 
 dwelt unafraid. There he had learned those lessons of 
 discipline and service, of noble living and the spirit of 
 sacrifice that were to fit him so splendidly to meet life, 
 the wisdom of a father and mother seeing the need of 
 moulding early so strong a character, guiding it into those 
 channels from whence, having found its bearings, it 
 would safely seek the open sea. Truth, honor, were of 
 the air he breathed, Edward's father's fineness and his 
 mother's strong, tender sympathy and understanding the 
 foundations upon which this Boy built up his moral 
 outlook on life. His eyes glowed now, remembering his 
 mother's quick understanding of his mood as he sat 
 that afternoon entranced listening to Rubinstein ; and at 
 his weariness after these years of unremitting work in 
 Paris, years that had laid the foundation for the great 
 future he was to build. It was just like her, he thought, 
 to leave it to him to decide. Later, he knew, she would 
 be ready with her advice ; but not until he asked it. Their 
 mutual trust and understanding was very sweet to the lad 
 standing upon the brink of a decision influencing his 
 whole future career. 
 
 So full had he been of his afternoon, that for a mo- 
 ment Edward was moved to go straight to Rubinstein, 
 feeling sure this master would understand. He was not 
 ordinarily afraid of celebrities. His father's house had 
 always been the rendezvous of people of note, his father's 
 love of art in all forms, drawing artists to him. Thus 
 he partly satisfied his craving for the artistic life, by inter- 
 
296 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 course with those men and women who were free to ex- 
 press themselves through the various arts. So vital, how- 
 ever, was this crisis facing the lad, that Edward hesitated 
 to go to Rubinstein, desiring to think out first just what 
 he wanted and why. He feared to decide too hastily; 
 so he had slipped away to these old Gardens he loved, a 
 place full of the music of old Paris and its impelling 
 past. While he had been studying in New York under 
 Paul Desvernine, his first professional teacher, Edward 
 had come under the influence of the brillant Carreno, 
 receiving from her occasional supplementary lessons, an 
 influence leaving its indelible trace, this splendid genius 
 firing the Boy's imagination and ambition to white heat. 
 Full of enthusiasm, he had come to Paris with his mother 
 three years before, and having passed his examinations, 
 entered the Paris Conservatoire for a course in piano and 
 theory. His slim knowledge of French had made it diffi- 
 cult for him to follow the lectures of Savard, his teacher 
 in composition and theory, — a difficulty he had set to 
 work immediately to overcome. He chuckled now re- 
 membering his first essay in French, when as a boy of 
 ten he had made the "grand tour" with his mother from 
 Scotland to the Rhine. Then their stay in Paris had been 
 all sunshine, a play time when the child had absorbed 
 avidly the wonders all about him. He had saved some 
 French money, and one day, seized with an American 
 boy's craving for candy, he had sallied forth unknown 
 to his mother to spend his little hoard in satisfying it. 
 Seeing a shop near the hotel conspicuously marked 
 "Confections," he had gone in eagerly, his imagination 
 swiftly supplying the needed letters to make the word 
 "confectionary." Surrounded by a group of laughing 
 girls, he had in his child's French explained his errand, 
 his confusion deepening as their merriment grew. In 
 
Boy Creator of American Music 297 
 
 the end he had laughed with them, his humor overwhelm- 
 ing his embarrassment; and he had hurried out to seek 
 further until he found. 
 
 The boy of seventeen was weary of the grind of the 
 past three years, even while he realized keenly what they 
 meant to his future career. He had grown restive under 
 the tremendous academic strain. The routine had become 
 irksome to this lad by nature none too systematic nor 
 too full of application. He recognized clearly what 
 he had gained by the hard work he had been obliged 
 to do, even as he knew and appreciated the inspiration 
 coming to him from the teachers who, quick to see the 
 budding genius in the lad, took pride in him and his work. 
 He had won by his unceasing effort, the much coveted 
 fellowship from the Conservatoire. - He loved the con- 
 genial atmosphere by which he was surrounded. Yet 
 the spirit of the quest was upon him, and he, with a boy's 
 natural eagerness, longed to explore new musical fields. 
 He must leave Paris and go on from mountain top to 
 mountain top until he should arrive. That he loved his 
 surroundings and his teachers made the struggle the 
 harder. The urge of the Celt and the artist was upon 
 him, and he must answer the call. 
 
 Two weeks a year had been all the holiday allowed the 
 Boy, though once he had prolonged it a little by sub- 
 stituting for the organist in the tiny church of the French 
 village where those precious days of freedom were spent, 
 a village from whence he could escape quickly into the 
 country, he reveling in the long days in the open. 
 On Sundays he had played the organ, his interest centred 
 less on the music before him, than on the congregation 
 and on the young lord of the manor who came to Mass in 
 his hunting clothes, and accompanied by two immense 
 dogs who laid down solemnly on either side of their 
 
298 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 master, their eyes fixed on the American boy improvising 
 at the organ. This holiday was all to short for this 
 sensitive, delicately-poised lad, whose cry since babyhood 
 had always been : "May I go to the country ?" The un- 
 loveliness of the city, its roar and its smoke-hung skies 
 smothered him, his spirit craving the untrammeled free- 
 dom of the farm where as a boy he had spent his summer 
 holidays. 
 
 Yet this lad of seventeen was not all seriousness. He 
 was a healthy, normal boy, winning even in his mischief- 
 loving fun, his humor, so Celtic in its temper, bubbling 
 continually, a sparkling humor tinged with kindliness, 
 sharpness and rancor having no part in his nature. 
 Monotony palled on him, and he recalled how once, 
 when his French lesson bored him, he had relieved the 
 dullness by drawing a portrait of his French teacher, a 
 man with an uncommonly large nose. Edward was 
 caught just as the sketch was finished ; but so impressed 
 was the Frenchman with his own likeness, that instead of 
 reprimanding the Boy, he had asked him if he had ever 
 studied drawing. 
 
 "No, monsieur. I have just drawn things always." 
 
 "I shall keep this drawing, monsieur Edward, as a 
 reminder of you. I have a friend, an instructor at the 
 Beaux Arts to whom I will show this excellent likeness." 
 
 The artist was so delighted that he went straight to 
 Edward's mother. 
 
 "Your son has unusual talent, madame. Give him 
 to me for three years, and I will make of him a great 
 artist. He has the temperament, the imagination." 
 
 "What of his musical career?" 
 
 "Let me have him, madame. I will instruct him free, 
 and be responsible for his support during those three 
 years." 
 
Boy Creator of American Music 299 
 
 "You are most kind, monsieur. I must talk the matter 
 over first with Edward, and with Marmontel, his teacher 
 in piano. It is too important a decision to make hastily." 
 
 Marmontel, averse to losing his talented pupil, strongly 
 advised against interrupting the Boy's musical career. 
 Edward, when approached, did not hesitate a moment. 
 
 "I prefer tone pictures to those made by brush and 
 palette. It is the medium by which I can give of my 
 best, express what is deepest in me." 
 
 So this lad, so versatile and full of genius, turned his 
 back upon painting, to give himself wholly to a musical 
 career, a choice he was never to regret. His extraordin- 
 ary powers of vision and imagination were, through the 
 medium of music, to interpret the hidden emotions of 
 the human soul, to interpret life, nature, the ancient lore 
 of the Celt, to be the symbols of those things of the 
 spirit which are the essence of life, this power of inter- 
 pretation, the true function of the artist as it is the 
 measure of his greatness. 
 
 Among his fellow students at the Conservatoire, was 
 Claude Debussy, whose original genius was not to show 
 itself until later when he came under Russian influence. 
 Both these boys were dreamers, dwellers in a world of 
 colorful imagination. Both lived in the world of the 
 mystic, the magic, the elusive; but Debussy's world was 
 a place of vague wandering in shadows dank and sun- 
 less, or shot with the haunting ominousness of pursuing 
 evil, of tragedy dogging the footsteps of youth, of shad- 
 ows drowning out the light. Edward, looking out upon 
 life, clear-eyed and joyous, recognized the vein of tragedy 
 in life, yet dominated it, depicting life largely and ro- 
 bustly, a world of struggle between titan forces through 
 which ran the gold thread of spiritual beauty, a world 
 alive, poignant with human emotion, yet a world devoid 
 
300 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 of the sensuous, a world of shadows through which 
 one reached the light. He lived in a dream-filled world 
 of beauty, a world intangible and full of magic, yet a 
 world vital and real, of the vigorous ruggedness of north- 
 ern cliffs carven and torn by a wild, northern sea. 
 
 As never before, Edward standing in the Gardens, felt 
 himself at a crossroads in which his decision would be 
 the determining factor in his life. The spirit of the 
 quest was upon him, — the seeking of new fields in which 
 to test his powers. The beauty of Paris and all it 
 meant to him gripped him ; yet after hearing Rubinstein 
 that afternoon, he knew his need of new experiences, 
 a realization deepening as he paced the gravel walks 
 of the old Gardens. Where could he best attain his 
 goal? Moscow? Rubinstein was connected with the 
 Conservatory there. Why not? Perhaps he could yet 
 see the virtuoso before he left Paris. He would consult 
 with his mother at once, and decide where they should 
 go. Moscow was a long way to go, perhaps, on a chance. 
 Stuttgart, Frankfort and Leipsic were nearer. At least 
 he knew that Paris and his work there was over. If 
 he was to arrive he must go elsewhere, spinning anew his 
 colored web of vision. At all hazards he must be true 
 to his ideal, no matter what the cost. Already he had 
 read widely in many literatures, and this knowledge he 
 was now applying to the aesthetic and' philosophic prob- 
 lems touching music, its theory and its practice. He had 
 come to definite conclusions as to the tendencies and po- 
 tentialities of music, conclusions revealing the maturity 
 of this seventeen year old lad. 
 
 The rose-burdened air filled him with sudden longing 
 for the sweet pure air of the country, for woods and 
 fields where he might roam free as the wind, following, 
 perchance, rod in hand, some winding brook up into the 
 
Boy Creator of American Music 301 
 
 hills; or to lie on a tide-hewn cliff overlooking the sea 
 he loved so passionately. He brushed the thought away. 
 He must not think of holidays now. His face was set 
 toward the goal which he had visioned. He would work 
 on steadily and courageously despite weariness and dis- 
 couragement. The spirit of Cuchullin was in his soul. 
 Stern with himself, he, so sensitively attuned to the 
 tragedy and comedy of life, was compassionate toward 
 others' feelings. With the tenderness of a large nature, 
 he was to look out upon life, his strength and his pas- 
 sion to be measured by that restraint so truly Celtic. 
 To him there came those noble thoughts which Maeter- 
 linck says, "pass across man's heart like great white 
 birds," thoughts that he would later translate into tone 
 pictures of unending music, music embodying a beauty 
 at once aerial and enchanted; music, lucid as the moun- 
 tain brook, as epical and full of virile power as Cuchullin 
 of old; music, realistic yet impregnated with that which 
 is divine, the "Island Harp" once more unbound by his 
 touch. The Celt in him was subtly blended with the 
 Anglo-Saxon, his heritage likewise; for above all, this 
 Boy, Edward MacDowell, was to represent in himself 
 and in his music, not only the best America had to give, 
 but he was to be first and foremost the creator of Ameri- 
 can music, to possess also, the vision of the truly great 
 artist who is both prophet and interpreter. His music 
 was to be rich in his virile, vivid personality; yet more 
 than that, it was to be as indigenous to the soil from 
 which it sprang as the poetry of Walt Whitman, no whit 
 the less, because he was, like the poet, to build upon 
 the foundations of the traditional, taking old forms and 
 resolving them into new ones, giving to them new values. 
 Standing by the playing fountain in the rich gold of 
 the July sunset, there came to the lad the vision of the 
 
302 A Book of Boyhoods 
 
 road he must follow. His questing spirit leaped to the 
 task. He would go to his mother, and decide with her 
 the next step, and then like pilgrims of old they would 
 set out, their eyes upon the next summit beckoning them. 
 Shadow and sunshine would be his lot; it was ever the 
 way of the artist: but in the end he would outrun the 
 shadows, the unfathomable spirit of Cuchullin the Uncon- 
 querable to sustain him to the gates of the sunset and 
 beyond. 
 
 In the still evening air, the bells of St. Sulpice rang 
 out the Angelus, their silvery sweetness flooding the 
 Gardens bathed in sunset light. With quick restless 
 steps, the lad made his way out of the Gardens redolent 
 with roses, his thoughts full of the future. With the 
 old life here he was done; but to-morrow he would fol- 
 low the new road opening before him, a road that ulti- 
 mately, by many and devious ways, would bring him back 
 to his native land of heart's desire, that land that would 
 some day hail him as the creator of American music.