It seems
that the Japanese have domesticated nature.
Lafcadio Hearne.
I always think of my school as my boyhood.
Until I was big enough to swim the
Missouri River my home was in a little Kansas town, and we boys lived
in the woods and in the water all Summer, and in the woods and on the
ice all Winter. We trapped and hunted, we rowed and fished,and built
dams, and cut stick horses, and kept stick-horse livery stables
where the grapevines hung, and where the paw-paws mellowed in the
Fall. We made mud slides into our swimming hole, and we were artists in
mud-tattoo, painting face and body with thin black mud and scraping
white stripes from head to foot. We climbed the trees and cut our
names, we sucked the sap of the box elder and squashed poke berries
for war paint. We picked wild grapes and gooseberries, and made
pop-guns to shoot green haws. In the Autumn we gathered walnuts, and in
the Spring we greeted the johnny-jump-ups, and the sweet williams
as they peered through the mold.
Always, we boys were out of doors, as it seems to me; and I
did the chores. It
is something to learn the toughness of hickory under the saw, how
easily walnut splits, how mean elm is to
handle: and a certain dexterity
comes to a boy who teaches a calf to drink, or slops hogs without
soiling his Sunday clothes in the evening. And the hay makes acrobats.
In the loft a boy learns to turn flip-flops, and with a lariat
rope he can make a trapeze. My rings were made by padding the iron
rings from the hubs of a lumber wagon and swinging them from the
rafters.
Bill, little Bethlehem Bill, has a better school than I had;
the
house and the things that go with it. Bill's teachers know more
accurately what they
are about than did my teachers in the old days out West half a century
ago. And, of course, Bill is getting things from his school that I did
not get. But he is growing up with a woefully distorted idea of life.
What does Bill know about the woods and the flowers? Where in
Bill's makeup is that which comes from browsing on berries and nuts
and the rank paw paw, and roaming the woods like the Bander-log?
And the crops, what does he know about them?
The silver-sides used to live in the pool under the limestone
ledges by the old
stone quarry where the snakes would sun themselves at noon. The wild
rose, with its cinnamon-scented flower and curling leaves, used to
bloom in May for me—for me and a
little brown-eyed girl who found her
ink-bottle filled with them when the school bell called us in from
play. And on Saturdays we boys roamed over the prairies picking wild
flowers, playing wild plays and dreaming wild dreams—children's dreams.
Do
you suppose that little Bill dreams such dreams in a fifty-foot
lot with only his mother's flowers in the window pots to teach him
the great mystery of life?
Bill has no barn. I doubt if he can skin a cat, and I am sure
he cannot do
the big drop from the trapeze. To turn a flip-flop would fill him
with alarm, and yet Jim Betts, out in Kansas, used to turn a double
flip-flop over a stack of barrels! And Jim Betts is a man to look at.
He is built by the day. He has an educated body, and it is going into
its fifties with health and strength that Bill will have to work
for. And Jim Betts and I used to make our own kites and nigger-shooters
and sleds and rabbit traps.
Bill's school seems real enough, but his play and his work
seem rather empty. Of
course Bill cannot have the fringe of a million square miles of wild
buffalo range for his out-of-doors. No, Bill cannot have that. Never,
again. And to imagine that Bill needs anything of the kind is to
forget
the magic of Bill's "make-believe!" A tree, a brook, a stretch of
grass!
What old-world things Bill's fancy can create there! What untold
history repeat itself in Bill's most fragmentary play! Bill, is by
nature, a conjuror. Give him but little and he will make a world for
himself, and grow to be a man. Older people seem, however, to forget,
and deprive Bill of the little that he needs; and it is worth while,
therefore, to develop the contrast between Bill's school and that
school of mine in the long-ago land of my boyhood out-of-doors.
The Land of Out-of-Doors! What irony there is in such glowing
phrase to city
boys like Bill! The supreme delight of my own boyhood days was to
gather
wild flowers in a wooded hollow, to reach which led across a sunny
stretch of wild meadow rising to the sky; and I would have you know
that I lived as a boy in a land where a weed never grew.
[1] I
wish that Bill might have access
to the places where the wild flowers grow, and
above all I wish that Bill might have more opportunity to see his
father at work. A hundred years ago these things were within the reach
of every boy and girl; but now, alas, Bill sees no other manual labor
than
the digging of a ditch in a cluttered street, or stunted in growth, he
has almost become a part of the machine he daily tends, and Boyville
has become a paved and guttered city, high-walled, desolate, and dirty;
with here and there a vacant lot hideous with refuse in early Spring
and overwhelmed with an increasing pestilence of weeds as the Summer
days go by! And the strangest thing about it all is, that Bill accepts
unquestioningly, and even with manifestations of joy, just any sort of
a world, if only it is flooded with sunshine.
I remember how, in my boyhood, the rare advent of an old tin
can in my favorite swimming hole used to offend me, while such a thing
as a cast-off shoe was simply intolerable, and I wonder
that Bill's unquenchable
delight in outdoor life does not become an absolute rage in his
indifference to the dreadful pollution of the streams and the universal
pestilence of weeds and refuse in our thickly populated districts.
I cannot refrain from quoting an amusing poem of James
Whitcomb Riley's,
which expresses (more completely than anything I know) the delight of
boys in outdoor life, where so many things happen and so many
things lure; and you can easily catch in the swing of Riley's verse
that
wanton note which is ordinarily so fascinatingly boyish, but which
may too easily turn to a raging indifference to everything that makes
for purity in this troubled life of ours.
Three
Jolly Hunters
O there were three jolly youngsters;
And a-hunting they did go,
With a
setter-dog and a pointer-dog
And a
yaller-dog also.
Looky
there!
And they hunted and they hal-looed;
And the first thing they did find
Was a dingling-dangling hornets' nest
A-swinging in the wind.
Looky there!
And the first one said, "What is it?"
Said the next, "Let's punch and
see,"
And the third one said, a mile from
there,
"I wish we'd let it be!"
Looky there! (Showing the back of his
neck.)
And they hunted and they hal-looed;
And the next thing they did raise
Was a bobbin bunnie cotton-tail
That vanished from their gaze.
Looky there!
One said it was a hot baseball,
Zippt thru the brambly thatch,
But the others said 'twas a note by post
Or a telergraph dispatch.
Looky there!
So they hunted and they hal-looed;
And the next thing they did
sight,
Was a great big bull-dog chasing them,
And a farmer hollering "Skite!"
Looky there!
And the first one said "Hi-jinktum!"
And the next, "Hi-jinktum-jee!"
And the last one said, "Them very words
Has just occurred to me!"
Looky there! (Showing the tattered seat
of his pants.)
This is the hunting song of the American
Bander-log,
[2]
and this kind of hunting is better than the kind that needs
a gun. To one who falls into the habit of it, the gun is indeed a
useless tool.
I am reminded of a day I spent with a gun at a remote place in the
Rocky
Mountains, where, during the 25 days I have camped there on four
different trips, I have seen as many as 150 of the wildest of North
American animals, the Rocky Mountain sheep. I lay in ambush for three
hours waiting for sheep, and the sheep came; but they were out of range
again before I saw them because I had become so interested in killing
mosquitoes! I timed myself at intervals, and 80 per minute for three
solid hours makes an honest estimate of 14,400. And I was hungry,
too. I fancy the sheep were not frightened but wished the good work to
go on undisturbed.
Do you, perhaps, like candy? Did you ever consider that the
only sweetmeat
our forefathers had for thousands of years was wild honey? And those
sour times—if I may call them such—before the days of sugar and
candy, come much nearer to us than you realize, for I can remember
my own grandfather's tales of bee-hunting in Tennessee. Just imagine
how exciting it must have been in the days of long-ago to find a tree
loaded with—candy! A bee tree! If Bill were to go back with me to the
wild woods of
Tennessee, some thrill of that old excitement would well
up from the depths of his soul at finding such a tree. You may wonder
what I am driving at, so I will tell you, that one of the most exciting
experiences of my boyhood was a battle with a colony of bumble
bees. I was led into it by an older companion and the ardor and
excitement of that battle, as I even now remember it, are wholly
inexplicable
to me except I think of it as a representation through inherited
instinct of a ten-thousand-years' search for wild honey.
My schooling grew out of instinctive reactions toward natural
things; hunting
and fishing, digging and planting in the Spring, nutting in the Fall,
and the thousands of variations which these things involve, and I
believe that the play of instinct is the only solid basis of growth of
a boy or girl. I believe, furthermore, that the very essence of
boy humor is bound up with the amazing incongruity of his instincts.
Was there ever a boy whose instincts (many of them mere fatuity
like his digestive appendix) have not led him time and again into just
thin air, to say nothing of water and mud! For my part I have never
known anything more supremely funny than learning what a hopeless
mess of wood pulp and
worms a bumble-bee's nest really is, except,
perhaps, seeing another boy learn the same stinging lesson.
The use of formulas, too, is unquestionably instinctive, and
we all know how
apt a boy is to indulge in formulas of the hocus-pocus sort, like Tom
Sawyer's recipe for removing warts by the combined charm of black
midnight and a black cat, dead. And a boy arrives only late in his
boyhood, if ever, to some sense of the distinction between formulas
of this kind and such as are vital and rational. I think that there is
much instruction and a great deal of humor connected with the play of
this instinctive tendency. I remember a great big boy, a hired man on
my grandfather's farm, in fact, who was led into a fight with a nest of
hornets with the expectation that he would bear a charmed skin if he
shouted in loud repetition the words, "Jew's-harp, jew's-harp."
Talk about catching birds by putting salt on their tails!
Once, as I rowed
around a bend on a small stream, I saw a sand-hill crane stalking
along the shore. Into the water I went with the suddenly conceived
idea that I could catch that crane, and, swimming low, I reached
the shore, about 20 feet from the bird, jumped quickly out
of the
water, made a sudden dash and the bird was captured! Once I saw a
catfish, gasping for air at the surface of water that had been muddied
by the opening of a sluice-way in a dam. Swimming up behind the fish,
I jambed a hand into each gill, and, helped by the fish's tail, I
pushed it ashore; and it weighed 36 pounds! A friend of mine, by the
name of Stebbins, once followed his dog in a chase after a jack rabbit.
The rabbit made a wide circle and came back to its own trail some
distance ahead of the dog, then it made a big sidewise jump, and sat
looking at the dog as it passed by; so intently indeed that Stebbins
walked up behind the rabbit and took it up with his hands.
I think you will agree with me that my outdoor school was a
wonderful thing. The
Land of Out-of-Doors! To young people the best school and play-house,
and to older people an endless asylum of delight.
"The grass so little has to do,
A sphere of simple green
With only butterflies to brood
And bees to entertain.
"And stir all day to pretty tunes
The breezes fetch along,
And hold the sunshine in its lap
And bow—to everything.
"And thread the dew all night, like
pearls,
And make itself so fine,
A duchess were too common
For such a noticing.
"And even when it dies, to pass
In odors so divine
As lowly spices gone to sleep,
Or amulets of pine.
"And then to dwell in sovereign barns
And dream the days away,
The grass so little has to do—
I wish I were the hay."
The most important thing, I should say, for
the success of Bill's fine school is that ample opportunity be given to
Bill for every variety of play
including swimming and skating, and wherever possible, boating. It is
ridiculous to attempt to teach Bill anything without the substantial
results of play to build upon. Playgrounds are the cheapest
and, in many respects, the best of schools, but they are almost
entirely lacking in many of our towns which have grown to cities in
a generation in this great nation of villagers. The Boroughs of the
Bethlehems, for example, have no playground connected with
a Public
School, nor any other public place where boys can play ball.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
(This and
the following communication are from a small paper, printed
and published by two Bethlehem boys.)
We, the editors, have been dragged along
back
alleys, across open
sewers, and through rank growths of weed and thistle to view the
Monocacy meadows to consider the possibility of their use as a
playground or park. We are not much impressed with the
proposal, the place is apparently hopeless, but the park enthusiast
could not be touched by argument. To our very practical
objection that the cost would be excessive, he made the
foolish reply that there is no cost but a saving in using what has
hitherto been wasted. To our expressed disgust for the open
sewers and filth he replied that that was beside the question,
for, as he said, we must sooner or later take care of the
filth anyway. But, we said, the creek is contaminated above the
town. Very well, he replied, we have the right to
prohibit such contamination. But worst of all, in double meaning,
was his instant agreement to our statement that we had our
cemeteries which, he said, were really better than any Bethlehem
park could be.
COMMUNICATION.
Dear Editors: I took a
walk
along the Monocacy Creek on Sunday
afternoon and discovered clear water several miles above
town and a fine skating pond; but I suppose that you and all of
your subscribers will have to go to our enterprising neighbor,
Allentown, to find any well-kept ice to skate on
this
Winter. Most people think that you boys can swim in Nature's
own water, skate on Nature's own ice, and roam in Nature's
own woods, but it is absolutely certain that your elders
must take some care and pains if you town boys are to do any of
these things. And yet, here in the East, children are said
to be brought up (implying care and pains) and hogs are said
to be raised (implying only feeding). I thank the Lord that
I was "raised" in the West where there are no such false
distinctions.Your subscriber, S.
P.S.—As I came home covered with beggar-lice
and cockle-burrs I saw a ring of fire on South Mountain, an annual
occurrence which has been delayed a whole week this Autumn by a
flourish of
posters in several languages offering One Hundred Dollars Reward!
S.
In these days of steam and electricity we
boast
of having conquered nature.
Well, we have got to domesticate nature before much else can be
accomplished in this country of ours. We have got to take care of our
brooks
and our rivers, of our open lands and our wooded hills. We have got
to do it, and Bill would be better off if we took half of the cost of
his fine school to meet the expense of doing it. When I was aboy I
belonged to the Bander-log, but Bill belongs to another tribe, the
Rats,
and there is nothing I would like so much to do as to turn Pied Piper
and lure the entire brood of Bethlehem boys
and girls to Friedensville
[3]
and
into that awful chasm of crystal water to come back no
more, no, not even when an awakened civic consciousness had made a
park of the beautiful Monocacy meadows and converted the creek into a
chain, a regular Diamond Necklace of swimming holes. I beg the garbage
men's (not a printer's error for man's) pardon for speaking of the
beautiful Monocacy meadows. I refer to what has been and to what might
easily continue to be. As for the Diamond Necklace, that, of course,
would have to be above our gas works where the small stream of pure
tar now joins the main stream.
I know a small river in Kansas which is bordered by rich
bottom lands from
one-half to one mile in width between beautifully scalloped
bluffs—where
the upland prairie ends. In early days thick covering of grass was
everywhere, and the clear stream, teeming with life, wound its way
along a deep channel among scattered clusters of large walnut trees and
dense groves of elm and cotton wood, rippling here and there over beds
of rock. Now, however, every foot of ground, high and low, is
mellowed by the plow, and the last time I saw the once beautiful valley
of
Wolf River it was as if the whole earth had melted with the rains of
June, such devastation of mud was there! Surely it requires more than
the plow to domesticate nature; indeed, since I have lived between
the coal-bearing Alleghenies and the sea, I have come to believe that
it
may require more than the plow and the crowded iron furnace, such
pestilence
of refuse and filth is here!
I suppose that I am as familiar with the requirements of
modern industry
as any man living, and as ready to tolerate everything that is
economically wise, but every day as I walk to and fro I see our
Monocacy
Creek covered with a scum of tar, and in crossing the river bridge I
see a half mile long heap of rotting refuse serving the Lehigh as
a bank on the southern side; not all furnace refuse either by any
means, but nameless stinking stuff cast off by an indifferent
population
and carelessly left in its very midst in one long unprecedented
panorama of putrescent ugliness! And when, on splendid Autumn
days, the nearby slopes of old South Mountain lift the eyes into pure
oblivion of these distressing things, I see again and again a line of
fire sweeping through the scanty woods. This I have seen every
Autumn since first I came to Bethlehem.
It is easy to speak in amusing hyperbole of garbage heaps and of brooks
befouled with tar, but to have seen one useless flourish of posters
on South Mountain in fifteen years! That is beyond any possible
touch of humor. It is indeed unfortunate that our river is not fit
for boys to swim in, and it is not, for I have tried it, and I am not
fastidious either, having lived an amphibious boyhood on the banks
of the muddiest river in the world; but it is a positive disgrace
that our river is not fit to look at, that it is good for nothing
whatever but to drink; much too good, one would think, for people who
protect the only stretch of woodland that is accessible to their boys
and girls by a mere flourish of posters! I was born in Kansas when
its inhabitants were largely Indians, and when
its greatest resource was wild buffalo skins; and whatever objection
you may have to this description of my present home-place between
the coal-bearing Alleghenies and the sea, please do not imagine
that I have a sophisticated sentimentality towards the Beauties
of Nature! No, I am still enough of an Indian to think chiefly of
my belly when I look at a stretch of country. In the West I like the
suggestion of hog-and-hominy which spreads for miles and miles
beneath the sky, and here in the East I like the promise of pillars of
fire and smoke and I like the song of steam!
Bill's School and Mine! It may seem that I have said a great
deal about my
school, and very little about Bill's. But what is Bill's school?
Surely, Bill's fine school-house and splendid teachers, and Bill's
good mother are not all there is to Bill's school. No, Bill's school is
as big as all Bethlehem, and in its bigger aspects it is a bad
school, bad because Bill has no opportunity to play as a boy should
play, and bad because Bill has no opportunity to work as a boy should
work.
"I b'en a-kindo musin', as the feller
says", and I'm
About o' the conclusion that
they ain't no better time,
When you come to cypher on it,
than the times we used to know,
When we swore our first
'dog-gone-it' sorto solem'-like and low.
"You git my idy, do you?—little tads, you understand—
Jes' a
wishin', thue and thue you, that you on'y was a man.
Yet here I am this minute, even
forty, to a day,
And fergittin' all that's in it,
wishin' jes the other way!"
I wonder
if our Bill will "wish the other way" when he is a man? Indeed, I
wonder if he will ever BE a man. If we could only count on that,
Bill's school would not be our problem.
