Thus after traversing a long orbit inversely to the prehistoric of the family genealogy, and tracing, on the backward swing, the curve of a little one’s experience in contact with the outer world and his individual impulsive responses thereto, we again take the train for South Reading. + 

Arriving at the station a man descends, asks directions, and follows the first dirt road to the left, leading over an almost treeless flat, and heading for a somewhat distant hill. Part way up the hill he notices a house on the right. Here lived a man named Whittemore, who having lost a leg, proceeded in due consideration of the remaining one, to invent, perfect and manufacture a new type of crutch, which has remained the standard to this day. The workshop stood some distance back of the house, just at the beginning of the pine woods that covered part of the hill. The road here takes a curve to the right, traverses the back of the hillside with a heavy growth of pines on the right ascension, and a neat valley to the left with scattering woods and meadow. The road then straightens, becomes of easy grade, and begins to emerge from the wilderness, so to speak. An orchard comes into view on the left, a field of herds-grass on the smoothly rounded hilltop at the right. Straight ahead, running at the right angles and terminating the road thus far traversed, was the main road from South Reading to Stoneham. The land here was level for a moment or two. At the left-hand corner of the intersection stood a rather modern house, clapboarded, painted white with green shutters, and in front of it on the Stoneham Road were two stately elms. Here lived the Tompsons. The person who made this trip had no sooner reached the intersection and made a mental note or two of the surroundings than he saw a middle-aged or elderly couple, quite near, slowly approaching from the left on the road running toward South Reading. They were leading between them a chubby child who was screaming at the top of his angry voice, crying savagely, declaring vindictively he would not go, he would not go to school. The traveler must have worn the tarnhelm of legend, for they saw him not. To our thinking he was a phantasm of years to come. The child was absurdly dressed. Under an immense straw hat, curving broadly upward at the brim and tied on with a ribbon, appeared his upturned face, red, bloated, distorted; angry eyes, terribly bright, running with tears in a stream; a mouth hideously twisted out of shape. Below this raging hell was a sort of white jacket and a big bow tie. Below this, white pantalettes, gathered in at the ankle and more or less flounced or frizzled. These pantalettes were the source of his fear, of his rage and his protest. He had already on account of them, he said, been regularly insulted by the neighbors’ children who had formed a circle around him and danced, sneered, pointed the index of scorn, and made merry. Was that not enough? Must he now face a schoolful of tormentors? He would not go, he would not go! He bawled and screamed that he would not go! The child was on the verge of hysterics; it seemed less agonizing to face death than ridicule. The elders consulted quietly, turned back, the child still between them, and disappeared at the entranceway of a house a hundred yards or so beyond the Tompsons on the Stoneham Road. Next day, the child appeared in conventional garb. His name was Louis, or, as his Grandmother pronounced it, Louie. It was a joyous day for him, a sad day for her. For in her heart she knew that with the laying away of the pantalettes there was laid away a child⁠—a child gone forever⁠—a child soon to be but a sweet memory⁠—a child soon to metamorphose into a tousle-headed, freckled, more or less toothless, unclean selfish urchin in jeans; and that he would continue to grow bigger, stronger, rougher, and gradually grow away from her⁠—ever more masculine, ever more selfish. But this apprehension, this heart’s foreboding was not to come wholly true, for she held his love⁠—she held it to the end. The child was not an enfant terrible; he was, rather, an independent, isolated compound of fury, curiosity and tenderness. Subtle indeed were the currents flowing and mingling within him, embryonic passions arising and shaping, ambitions vaguely stirring; while his sharp eyes saw everything. Spring was on the wane. The birds were full-throated in glorification of the number of bugs and worms eaten, or the intensive discussion of domestic affairs. High up in one of the Tompson elms⁠—the one to the east⁠—hung the purse-like nest of the selfsame golden orioles that came there year by year, while from a nearby meadow floated the tinkle of a solitary bob-o-link winging its way rejoicing. The day was beauteous; full sunshine flooded and enfolded all. The child, after much thought⁠—of its kind⁠—suddenly announced he was ready. His curiosity had been insidiously at work. He would see the school; he would meet new children; he had become eager; he would be a big boy in the world’s opinion. So, on this same cheerful morning, hand in hand with Grandma, who alone habitually assumed responsibilities, he began the pilgrimage of learning that hath no end. They took the dusty road that led eastward, directly toward the north end of the village. They leisurely mounted a gentle grade until the crest was reached. At this exact point, just behind the stone wall to the right of the road⁠—marvel of marvels⁠—stood a gigantic, solitary ash tree. On account of a certain chipmunk, various flowers, pebbles, and other things, the child had not noticed it during the approach. But of a sudden, there it stood, grand, overwhelming, with its immense trunk, its broad branches nearly sweeping the grass, its towering dome of dense dark green; opposite it, across the road was a farm house; back of it an open pasture. From the vantage of the road spread out a view of things below. The grandmother was for going on. The child stood transfixed, appalled. A strange faraway storm, as of distant thundering, was arising within his wonderself. He had seen many trees, yes; but this tree⁠—this tree! He trembled strangely, he wished to cry; with gentle scolding he was dragged away. From this point the road was bare and shaggy. Halfway down, to the left, and set well back, was found not the little red schoolhouse of romance, but a rather large white one, clapboarded, green blinds, gabled, a bell, a well with force-pump, trampled playground, and so on. He was duly presented to the teacher. Her face and form, alas, like many another face and form, have passed into memory’s oblivion. All details settled, he was to come the next morning, which he did, after successfully passing the magnet tree, while saluting it affectionately in a calmer mood. Day after day he passed the tree. It became his tree⁠—his Great Friend. + 

He was to spend many days at this barren hillside school. He became acquainted with the boys and girls there, for it was coeducational. What these children did during the recess hour would scandalize the wholly good. But to the casual sinner, scrutinizing the depths of his own past, reason might be found and a certain tolerance engendered whereby these vagaries of small animals, if not exactly condoned, might at least be minimized as the native output or byproduct of inquisitiveness and emulation. The child was as yet too young to fight. But according to the rules and regulations of the gang his time was but deferred, for each new boy must establish his fistic status. + 

The schoolroom was large and bare with two wooden posts supporting the roof. The teacher sat at her desk on a raised platform at the wall opposite the entrance. The children sat at rows of desks (a row per grade) at right angles to the rear wall; in front of them an open space for recitation by class; blackboard on the wall and so forth. There were five grades in the single room. Teacher sat at her desk, ruler in hand to rap with or admonish. All the children studied their lessons aloud, or mumbled them. The room vibrated with a ceaseless hum, within which individual voices could be heard. Everything was free and easy; discipline rare. There was however a certain order of procedure. Came time for a class to recite. They flocked to the wall and stood in a row; neither foot nor head at first. Questions and answers concerning the lesson of the day. Teacher’s questions specific; pupils’ answers must be definite, categorical. Teacher was mild, patient; the answers were sometimes intelligent, more often hesitant, bashful, dull, or hopelessly stupid. Each answer was followed by a monotonous “go to the foot,” “go to the head;” and all the time the hum went on, the unceasing murmur, a thin piping voice here, a deeper one there, a rasping out yonder, as they pored over their primers, first readers, geographies, arithmetics; while now and again Teacher’s voice rose high, questioning the class on the rack, the children answering as best they could. This babel merged or deliquesced into a monotone; there seemed to be a diapason, resonant, thick, the conjoined utterance of many small souls trying to learn, entering the path of knowledge that would prove short for most of them. The children were all barefoot and rather carelessly clad; notably so in the matter of omissions. One thing is certain and the rest is lies: This school was of, for, and by the people. + 

The child was given his proper place in the lowest grade, or class, or whatever it was called. He took hold rather blithely. He seemed to feel the importance of his entry into this new world, so different from home. Little by little he seemed to feel that he belonged there; but he never succeeded in feeling that the school belonged to him except as to its externals. Somehow he did not fit into the curriculum or the procedure. He was of a pronounced, independent nature. He quickly became listless as to his own lessons. He seemed to be nothing but a pair of eyes and ears not intended for books, but for the world little and big about him. In this immediate sense he was almost devoid of self-consciousness. His normal place was at the foot of his class. But one day he awakened to the fact that unawares he had become interested, not in books, but in procedure; said procedure consisting in the oral examinations and recitations of the grades above his own, as they, in accordance with the arrangement of the schoolroom, stood directly in front of him, drawn up in line, undergoing the routine torture. He began to notice their irregular mass-effect and their separate persons. He followed their fortunes in going to the foot and going to the head. He transferred himself to them. He noticed, too, which girls were the prettiest and which boys were the gawkiest. He learned the names of all. He became solicitous of their personal fortunes, in their struggle for knowledge or their attempts to escape it. For him, it became a sort of drama, a sort of stage performance, and he began to note with growing interest what they said and what teacher said, which answers were correct, which were failures. Over and over he saw and heard this until he came to know the groundwork of what all the grades above him were struggling with. But as to his own lessons⁠—Alas! Yet he followed the upper grades so intently that he became critical: What was this about the four men who built so many perches of stone wall in three days, and two other men who were to build some wall in six days? What did it amount to anyway? The real question was where was the wall to be built? For whom was it to be built? What was his name? What were the names of the men who were building the wall, (for it was becoming a real wall)? Were they Irish or Scotch? Where did they get the stone to build the wall? Did they get it from the rough quarry across the road from the schoolhouse? Did they gather up boulders from the fields? Was not this matter of four men and two men irrelevant? The information was too sparse, too unconvincing. He could not place the wall, and what good was any wall he could not see? And thus he went on, unaffected by the abstract, concerned only with the concrete, the actual, the human. + 

One evening when all were at home, a letter arrived addressed to Grandpa. He opened the envelope and read the letter aloud. It was from Teacher, and set forth with deep regret and concern that his grandson was a dull boy, that he was inattentive, would not study his lessons, was always at the foot of his class, but he was a nice boy. Could not Mr. List bring influence to bear to induce Louis to reform his ways? Would not a kindly word from him, concerning the need of education, have a moral effect? She had used all her powers of persuasion, and so forth and so on. At the end of the reading Grandpa dropped the letter on the floor, burst into volcanic laughter, roaring until the lid of the heater rattled, rocking forward and backward on his chair, clapping himself on the knee, in a series of subsiding outbursts, ending in a long drawn spasmodic chuckle, expressive of his cynical sense of humor, his infinite contempt for those who had eyes and yet saw not. To call his sharp-eyed grandson a dullard! Why, he said, one might as well call Sirius a flapjack, and other joking words to that effect, for he was fond of teasing his grandson, whom he had so long watched out of the corner of his eye. But Grandma, more conservative, took the matter seriously. With her grandson standing at her knees, a bit abashed, a bit afraid, after giving her six propitiatory kisses, his arms about her neck and cheek to cheek, she found it, oh, so hard, to scold him. Instead she told him gently how necessary it was to acquire an education; how necessary to that end that little boys, particularly her own grandson, for the family’s pride, should attend industriously to lessons. Could he not do better, would he not do better? He said he could and would; and all was peace. + 

Next day, at school, he pitched in, and the next day and the next; shutting out all else. Oh, it was so easy to head this class; so easy for one who knew what the upper grades knew, or thought they knew for a moment or perhaps a day. They knew not that it was all, save a bare remnant, fated to fade away forever. Tired of heading the class, which was so easy, he occasionally, and indeed with increasing frequency fell to zero, because of a lapse, because, perhaps, of a twitching squirrel in a tree nearby the window, or a beautiful white cloud curiously changing shape as it slowly drifted through a beautiful blue sky. And what did it all amount to? What signified it to be at the head of a row of dull-wits? He was becoming arrogant. For Grandma’s sake, he kept on, after a fashion. He was becoming bored. + 

Summer was waning. The third of September was at hand. Six candles in the cake announced an anniversary. He was overjoyed. He was actually six. + 

The winter of 1862⁠–⁠3 passed along with its usual train of winter sports and hardships. Louis joined heartily according to his height and weight in all the sports. Of hardships he knew nothing. What fun it was to be drawn on a sled over the snow by his Uncle Julius. To be drawn on the same sled over the dark sheer ice of the pond by Uncle on newly sharpened skates. What thrill of courage it required not to cry out as he shuddered at the darkness below, and wondered whether the pace were not too swift. But Uncle, some fifteen years older than he, was to him a big man; and what could not a big man do? So he had faith in Uncle, if not entire confidence, as they flew here and there among the gay crowd of skaters. How they went way to the end of the pond and then swung back past the ice houses where men were beginning to work! And later on how thrilled and stilled he was by the thunderous boom and tear of an ice crack ripping its way from shore to shore! And many such booms he heard on similar trips in zero weather. And then the men at work cutting ice! How exciting it was to watch men at work. They used large hand saws to cut ice into square blocks and there was one strange saw drawn by a horse. Then men with poles shoved and dragged the ice-blocks through the clear water to the bottom of the runway, and then it was hauled up the runway by a horse that walked away with a rope that ran through a pulley and then back to the ice cake. The ice seemed very thick and clear. + 

And then came splendid snowstorms, decorating the trees, forming great drifts through which he struggled in exultation, every now and then stumbling and falling with his face in the snow. How he rolled over and over in glee in the snow of a white world, a beautiful world even when the gray skies lowered. And why not? Had he not warm woolen mittens knitted by Grandma, and hood and stockings by the same faithful hands, and “artics”? Was he not all bundled up? + 

And the sleigh rides. Oh, the sleigh rides in the cutter with the horse looming so high, and the row of bells around the horse’s collar, jangling and tinkling in jerky time. And he so warm under the buffalo robe. And they met so many other sleighs in the village when they went to the post-office or the grocery store, and he noticed so many men walking about clad in buffalo coats. And he made snowballs and did all the minor incidentals. It was his first experience within the pulchritude of a winter in the open. His mother came frequently to see him and caress him. He could hardly understand why she loved him so; he had so many other personal interests and distractions. But he hailed her comings and deplored her departures. + 

While his name was Louis, he had other names⁠—interesting ones, too. He had not been christened or baptized. The question had called for a family council. The father, a nominal Freemason, not sure whether he was a Catholic or an Orangeman or anything in particular, expressed no serious interest; he would leave it to the rest. Grandpa, as usual, vented his view in scornful laughter. Grandma, a Mennonite, was opposed to baptism. But Mother in her excited way was rampant. What! Would she permit any man to say aloud over the body of her pure and precious infant that he was born in sin and ask for sponsors? Never! That settled it and they named him Louis Henri Sullivan. It has been declared and denied that the name was given in order to heap honors upon Napoleon III. Be that as it may. The name Henri, obviously, was to deify Grandpa. The Sullivan could not be helped. It was scorned by all but its owner. They detested the Irish, whose peaceful penetration of Boston had made certain sections thereof turn green. Even his wife could not stand for it, much less for Patrick. So sometimes she gallicized the name; which wasn’t so bad, when she used it in the third person, nominative, singular. Then she had an inspiration, an illumination one might say, and invented the word Tulive, whatever that may have meant, as a general cover-name, and thus secured a happy, lifelong escape. But later on, say about the age of twelve, the scion asked his father about this name Sullivan, which seemed to coincide with shanty-Irish. So his father told him this tale: Long ago in Ireland, in the good fighting days, there were four tribes or clans of the O’Sullivans: The O’Sullivan-Moors, the O’Sullivan Macs, and two others. That We were descended from the O’Sullivan-Moors, and that all four tribes were descended from a Spanish marauder, who ravished the west Irish coast and settled there. His name it appears was O’Soulyevoyne or something like that, which, translated, meant, “The Prince with One Eye.” Now, however great was the glory of this pirate chief, his descendant, Louis Henri Sullivan O’Sullivan-Moore-O’Soulyevoyne, had this specific advantage over him of the high-seas. The prince had but one eye that must have seen much; the youngster of six had two eyes that saw everything, without desire to plunder. + 

These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day. + 

And these become part of him or her that peruses them here. + 

Whitman + 