And the farmer-boy is not without his sentiment and his secrets, though he has never been at a children's party in his life, and, in fact, never has heard that children go into society when they are seven, and give regular wine-parties when they reach the ripe age of nine.But one of his regrets at having the summer school close is dimly connected with a little girl, whom he does not care much for, would a great deal rather play with a boy than with her at recess, -but whom he will not see again for some time,--a sweet little thing, who is very friendly with John, and with whom he has been known to exchange bits of candy wrapped up in paper, and for whom he cut in two his lead-pencil, and gave her half.At the last day of school she goes part way with John, and then he turns and goes a longer distance towards her home, so that it is late when he reaches his own.Is he late? He did n't know he was late; he came straight home when school was dismissed, only going a little way home with Alice Linton to help her carry her books.In a box in his chamber, which he has lately put a padlock on, among fishhooks and lines and baitboxes, odd pieces of brass, twine, early sweet apples, pop-corn, beechnuts, and other articles of value, are some little billets-doux, fancifully folded, three-cornered or otherwise, and written, I will warrant, in red or beautifully blue ink.These little notes are parting gifts at the close of school, and John, no doubt, gave his own in exchange for them, though the writing was an immense labor, and the folding was a secret bought of another boy for a big piece of sweet flag-root baked in sugar, a delicacy which John used to carry in his pantaloons-pocket until his pocket was in such a state that putting his fingers into it was about as good as dipping them into the sugar-bowl at home.Each precious note contained a lock or curl of girl's hair,--a rare collection of all colors, after John had been in school many terms, and had passed through a great many parting scenes,--black, brown, red, tow-color, and some that looked like spun gold and felt like silk.The sentiment contained in the notes was that which was common in the school, and expressed a melancholy foreboding of early death, and a touching desire to leave hair enough this side the grave to constitute a sort of strand of remembrance.
With little variation, the poetry that made the hair precious was in the words, and, as a Cockney would say, set to the hair, following:
"This lock of hair, Which I did wear, Was taken from my head;When this you see, Remember me, Long after I am dead."John liked to read these verses, which always made a new and fresh impression with each lock of hair, and he was not critical; they were for him vehicles of true sentiment, and indeed they were what he used when he inclosed a clip of his own sandy hair to a friend.And it did not occur to him) until he was a great deal older and less innocent, to smile at them.John felt that he would sacredly keep every lock of hair intrusted to him, though death should come on the wings of cholera and take away every one of these sad, red-ink correspondents.When John's big brother one day caught sight of these treasures, and brutally told him that he "had hair enough to stuff a horse-collar," John was so outraged and shocked, as he should have been, at this rude invasion of his heart, this coarse suggestion, this profiination of his most delicate feeling, that he was kept from crying only by the resolution to "lick" his brother as soon as ever he got big enough.
VIII
THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
One of the best things in farming is gathering the chestnuts, hickory-nuts, butternuts, and even beechnuts, in the late fall, after the frosts have cracked the husks and the high winds have shaken them, and the colored leaves have strewn the ground.On a bright October day, when the air is full of golden sunshine, there is nothing quite so exhilarating as going nutting.Nor is the pleasure of it altogether destroyed for the boy by the consideration that he is making himself useful in obtaining supplies for the winter household.The getting-in of potatoes and corn is a different thing;that is the prose, but nutting is the poetry, of farm life.I am not sure but the boy would find it very irksome, though, if he were obliged to work at nut-gathering in order to procure food for the family.He is willing to make himself useful in his own way.The Italian boy, who works day after day at a huge pile of pine-cones, pounding and cracking them and taking out the long seeds, which are sold and eaten as we eat nuts (and which are almost as good as pumpkin-seeds, another favorite with the Italians), probably does not see the fun of nutting.Indeed, if the farmer-boy here were set at pounding off the walnut-shucks and opening the prickly chestnut-burs as a task, he would think himself an ill-used boy.What a hardship the prickles in his fingers would be! But now he digs them out with his jack-knife, and enjoys the process, on the whole.The boy is willing to do any amount of work if it is called play.
In nutting, the squirrel is not more nimble and industrious than the boy.I like to see a crowd of boys swarm over a chestnut-grove; they leave a desert behind them like the seventeen-year locusts.To climb a tree and shake it, to club it, to strip it of its fruit, and pass to the next, is the sport of a brief time.I have seen a legion of boys scamper over our grass-plot under the chestnut-trees, each one as active as if he were a new patent picking-machine, sweeping the ground clean of nuts, and disappear over the hill before I could go to the door and speak to them about it.Indeed, I have noticed that boys don't care much for conversation with the owners of fruit-trees.
They could speedily make their fortunes if they would work as rapidly in cotton-fields.I have never seen anything like it, except a flock of turkeys removing the grasshoppers from a piece of pasture.
