VII
Boston
The New Rice Grammar School
One day, in Boston, a boy of nine was walking northward on the east side of Washington Street. Just then “Yankee Doodle” came along whistling his tune to a brisk step, a pair of boots slung over one shoulder of his faded blue jeans; and, under a stovepipe hat, much battered in the strife of years, this agile elderly man wore a grey chin beard after the manner of Uncle Sam. And thus went Yankee Doodle tirelessly up and down Washington Street, always on the east side of it, day after day, year after year. In a legendary sense he was a cobbler. The boy watched his kindly face approaching, and for the hundredth time admired in despair the clear sharp whistle which he had tried in vain to emulate; and, as Yankee passed on southward the boy turned east into South Bennett Street following the south sidewalk. About midway to Harrison Avenue a paper bag struck the sidewalk in front of him, burst, and hard candies scattered over the pavement. The boy, startled, looked around, and then up. In a second story window, straight across the way, appeared two fat bare arms, an immense bosom, a heavy, broad, red face, topped with straight black hair. A fat finger beckoned to him; a fat mouth said something to him; and at the doorway of the house was the number 22—the house he had been born in; but the silver nameplate marked P. Sullivan in black script was no longer there.
He had been led to the spot, which he had not seen for years, by a revived memory of a sweet child named Alice Look, who lived next door when the two of them were three together. He had wished to see once more the sacred dwelling wherein she had lived and the walled yard in which she had mothered him and called him Papa in their play.
Much troubled, he walked on to Harrison Avenue, where Bennett Street ends its one block of length. There he noticed that the stately trees were bare of leaves and sickly to the sight, while on the twigs and among the branches and even on the trunks were hundreds of caterpillar nests which made the trees look old, poor and forsaken. While he was counting the nests on a single tree, caterpillars now and then would come slowly downward from the heights. Some of them would remain for a time in midair, suspended invisibly, before completing their descent, perchance upon a passerby. The boy was examining one of these caterpillars undulating upon his coat sleeve, when his quick ear detected the sound of snare-drums. Crowds began to gather on the sidewalks. Slowly the drums beat out their increasing sadness, pulsing to a labored measure of weariness and finality, as a faint bluish mass appeared vaguely in the north. The sidewalk crowds became dense—men, women and children stood very still. Onward, into distinctness and solidity, came the mass of faded blue undulating to the pathos of the drums. The drum corps passed—and in the growing silence came on and passed ranks of wearied men in faded blue, arms at right shoulder, faces weather-beaten, a tired slow tread, measured as a time-beat on the pavement, the one-two of many souls. And to these men, as they marched, clung women shabbily clothed, with shawls drawn over their heads, moving on in a way tragically sad and glad, while to the skirts of many of these women clung dirty children. Thus moved in regular mass and in silence a regiment of veterans, their women, their children, passing onward between two tense rows of onlooking men, women and children, triple deep, many of them in tears. So vivid was this spectacle, so heartrending, so new this aching drama of return, that the boy, leaning against a caterpillared tree, overflowed with compassion. When he had ceased weeping upon his coat sleeve, Harrison Avenue was vacant; but not so the boy—he in fullness of sympathy was ill with the thought of what all this might mean. What was the mystery that lay behind these men in faded blue? He found no sufficing answer. The men had been mustered out, he had been told; that was all.
He chafed until he got permission to go to South Reading for a week end; ostensibly to visit the grandparents, surreptitiously to visit Julia, to whom alone he could bare his heart. He knew in advance what Grandpa would say; he knew in advance what Grandma would say; he wished eagerly to learn what Julia might say. So after earnest greetings with Grandpa and Grandma he slipped quietly to the kitchen. Julia was not there. He moved to the barn; Julia was not there. Then, in dime-novel fashion he made a detour through the “old” orchard, dodging from tree to tree in Indian fashion, examining the grass, crawling slowly on all fours, bent on surprise, signalling to an imagined companion in the rear, cautiously advancing until he caught a glimpse of a broad back, topped with massy hair on fire. He approached at a flat crawl and, from behind the next tree, saw Julia sitting on a milking stool peeling potatoes. Now came the villain’s mad rush. Julia was seized savagely—with an arm around her neck, her head pulled back, her face kissed all over, her hair roughly tousled, her shoulder pushed hard, her stool kicked from under her as Louis, in a warwhoop of joy, hailed her as Ireland’s hope, Queen of the orchard, and was greatly pleased.
Not so Erin’s daughter. Sitting broadly on the grass, shaking a clenched fist, she screamed: “Ye rat, ye vile spalpeen. To think o’ the likes o’ ye takin’ me unawares; and ye’ve upset the spuds and me pan of fresh water. May the divil fly away with ye. Get y’self out o’ here before I smash ye with the stool”; and Julia’s language became violent in a torrent of brogue, as, madly erect, she swung the stool and let fly while Louis danced about her singing an impudent Irish song he had learned from her. Then Julia sat largely down again in the grass, gasping for breath, while Louis went for the distant stool. Grandpa passed that way, remarking simply: “Ah, I hear you and Julia are visiting today.” Louis walked up to Julia and said, in a manner: “Julia Head, I now present you with this stool. It is far less beautiful than yourself, but in its humble way, it is as useful as your own valued activities, inasmuch as it, on many an occasion, has served as your main stay while you were drawing from our gentle kine the day’s accumulations. Will you accept this emblem of industry in the same simplicity of spirit with which it is offered you?” Julia, tired of ranting, laughed. “Sure,” she said, “ ’tis well ye know that had ye come at me dacently, it’s a hearty welcome I’d a given ye.” And she resumed operations, still sitting, the pan of spuds resting upon her enormous thighs. And Louis sat down meekly beside her, his small hand barely touching the expanse of freckled arm. He said he was sorry, and went on to pacify her. He used Gaelic words she had taught him, words romantically tender and sweet. Julia softened. With both hands she turned his face toward her; looked at him roguishly:
“Now what the divil is it ye want?”
“Julia, tell me a fairy story, won’t you? Just a little one, won’t you, Julia?”
“Divil a fairy tale there’ll be told this day! Tell me about Boston. I’ve a brother working there. I want ye to find how he’s getting on. His name’s Eugene Head. He’s younger than meself, he’s only here wan year. He’s tendin’ bar in a saloon on Tremont Street near King’s Chapel. I’ve heard he’s steady and don’t drink; and I’ve heard, too, that he knocks down quite a bit. Naw! I don’t mean that he knocks down people. I shouldn’t be talking such things t’ye anyway. It’s sorry I am I said a word. But Boston is a hell ye know.”
Then Louis opened the subject nearest his heart. He told her all about the soldiers in faded blue, and the wives and children hanging to them. What did it all mean? Why was it so sad; why did he have to cry?
“Well, Louis dear, ye know war’s a sad business; those men ye saw had just been mustered out of the army; they were good fighting men, but all tired out. From the shawls the women wore and the dirty childer, I know the whole crowd was Irish and poor; and as everyone knows, the Irish won the war. Think of it! Holy Virgin!—the Irish fighting for the naygers! What will it be next time?”
“But, Julia, what was it all for? What was back of it all?”
“I’ll not be telling ye what was back of it all, though well I know. I’ll waste no breath on one who has no moind. Besides you’re too young and ye have no education. Ye wouldn’t understand. Why the divil don’t ye stick hard to yer books, and learn? What in the name of all the saints d’ye think your father is spending his good money on ye furr? Filling yer belly with food, giving ye a good, clane bed to sleep in, putting nice clothes on ye, buying ye books, except that he wants ye to have an education? The Irish are proud of education, and yer father’s a proud man, and he wants to be proud of his son. In God’s name why don’t ye do yure share? Ye remember the tale, I told ye of the man who looked too long at the moon? It’s a tender heart indade, ye had likewise to be lookin’ at thim dirty childer hangin’ to the mithers’ skirts! It’s a big heart ye had and a fine education ye have that ye didn’t think at wanst whin ye saw thim that ye haven’t a care in the world, that ye’ve niver known rale hunger, niver a rale sorrow, niver a heartbreak, niver despair; niver heard the wolf bark at the doore as yer blood went cold! And yerself, Louis, wid yere big heart and small head couldn’t see with yer own eyes and without any books at all, that thim very childer was part of what as ye say lies behind it all? God! me heart aches in the tellin; for the min ye saw come back wuz not all the min that wint out; but I’m through. I’ll tell ye no more of what lies behind it all; but I’ll tell ye some more about education, for I want to knock a bit of sinse into yure empty skull. Yere all sintiment, Louis, and no mercy. You’ve kissed the Blarney Stone right well, and ye kicked the milking stool from under me.
“Now the story I’m to tell ye I got from one of me girl friends whose brother said he knew the man by reputayshun, and that he came from County Kerry where the Lakes of Killarney a’re I’ve told ye so mooch about, and I suppose ye’ve forgotten it all; and faith, I have me doubts, with yere scatter brains if ye can say fer a truth wither Ireland’s this side o’ the water or the other. Now its not meself as’ll make a short story long nor a long story short, so I’ll tell it in the words I heard it.
“This man from Kerry was in some way connected with the army, as most of the Irish were, for they’re natural fighting min from the oldest times. And wan day as he was out a-walking fer his health, and faring to and fro, he came upon a blanket lying on the ground; and at once he picked it up and with great loud laughter he sed, sed he: Sure I’ve found me blanket with me name upon it: U fer Patrick and S for McCarty; sure edication’s a foine thing, as me faather before me wud say.”
“Oh, Julia, I don’t believe that’s true. That’s just another Irish yarn.”
“Will, maybe it isn’t true and maybe it’s just a yarn; but I belave it’s true and I want to till ye this; the man from Kerry had a rale edication. Ye may think I’m a-jokin’ now, but when ye get older and have more sinse ye’ll be noticin’ that that’s the way everywan rades; and the higher educated they are, the more they rade just as Pat McCarty did, and add some fancy flourishes of their own. Now run along and carry in the wood, and do the chures. Me two feets is sore wid me weight. And take along the pans and the stool as ye go. I suppose it’s the whole batch of yees I’ll have to be feedin’; and I’ve a blister on me small toe, and me back is broke with handlin’ the wash tubs; an’ it’s little patience I have with ye, furr ye don’t seem to learn in school or out, and yit, be the powers, ye ask some mighty quare questions for a lad, so I suppose there’s something in the back of yer head that makes yer father support ye when ye ought to be wurkin’.”
And thus Julia grumbled on to the kitchen door and Louis did the chores. But his heart was not in them. Julia had told the story mockingly. She seemed to leave in it somewhere a sting he could feel but could not understand; and he mused as to what might perhaps be behind Julia, Irish to the core. She had set him vibrating at the suggestion of an unseen power and he became rigid in his resolve to penetrate the mystery that seemed to lie back of the tale she told.
Later on, say about the age of twelve, this same boy, to his own surprise, became aware that he had become interested in buildings; and over one building in particular he began to rave, as he detached it from the rest and placed it in his wonder-world. It stood at the northeast corner of Tremont and Boylston Streets. It was a Masonic Temple built of hewn granite, light gray in tone and joyous of aspect.
Boston, as a conglomerate of buildings, had depressed Louis Sullivan continuously since he became engulfed in it. These structures uttered to him as in chorus a stifling negation, a vast No!—to his yea-cry for the lighthearted. In their varied utterance, they were to him unanimous in that they denied the flowers of the field. Some were austere, some gave forth an offensive effluvium of respectability, some fronted the crowded street as though they had always been there and the streets had come later; some seemed to thank God that they were not as other buildings, while others sighed: “I am aweary, aweary.” Most of them were old and some very new; and individually they impressed Louis, in their special ways, as of an uncanny particularity. He seemed to feel them as physiognomies, as presences, sometimes even as personalities; thus the State House with its golden dome seemed to him a thin, mean, stingy old woman; while Park Street Church seemed to tower as a loyal guardian above its ancient graveyard, and as friendly monitor of the crowds below. And one day as they looked at Faneuil Hall, Grandpa said of it: “The Wild Ass of the City stamps above its head but cannot break its sleep.” This sounded thrilling and imaginary to Louis, like a wild thing out of Julia’s land of enchantment; but Grandpa said he got it out of a book and that its meaning was too deep for the boy—that he was talking to himself.
Thus buildings had come to speak to Louis Sullivan in their many jargons. Some said vile things, some said prudent things, some said pompous things, but none said noble things. His history book told him that certain buildings were to be revered, but the buildings themselves did not tell him so, for he saw them with a fresh eye, an ignorant eye, an eye unprepared for sophistries, and a mind empty of dishonesty. Nevertheless, a vague sense of doleful community among buildings slowly suffused him. They began to appear within his consciousness as a separate world in their way; a world of separated things seemed, in unison, to pass on to him a message from an unseen power. Thus immersed, he returned again and again to his wonder-building, the single one that welcomed him, the solitary one that gave out a perfume of romance, that radiated joy, that seemed fresh and full of laughter. How it gleamed and glistened in the afternoon sunlight. How beautiful were its arches, how dainty its pinnacles; how graceful the tourelle on the corner, rising as if by itself, higher and higher, like a lily stem, to burst at last into a wondrous cluster of flowering pinnacles and a lovely, pointed finial. Thus Louis raved. It has been often said that love is blind! If Louis chose to liken this new idol of his heart unto a certain graceful elm tree, the pulchritudinous virgin of an earlier day, surely that was his affair, not ours; for he who says that love is blind may be himself the blind—and love clairvoyant.
One day, on Commonwealth Avenue, as Louis was strolling, he saw a large man of dignified bearing, with beard, top hat, frock coat, come out of a nearby building, enter his carriage and signal the coachman to drive on. The dignity was unmistakable, all men of station in Boston were dignified; sometimes insistently so, but Louis wished to know who and what was behind the dignity. So he asked one of the workmen, who said:
“Why he’s the archeetec of this building.”
“Yes? and what is an archeetec, the owner?”
“Naw; he’s the man what drawed the plans for this building.”
“What! What’s that you say: drawed the plans for this building?”
“Sure. He lays out the rooms on paper, then makes a picture of the front, and we do the work under our own boss, but the archeetec’s the boss of everybody.”
Louis was amazed. So this was the way: The workmen stood behind their boss, their boss stood behind the archeetec—but the building stood in front of them all. He asked the man if there had been an “archeetec” for the Masonic Temple, and the man said: “Sure, there’s an archeetec for every building.” Louis was incredulous, but if it were true it was glorious news. How great, how wonderful a man must have been the “archeetec” of his beloved temple! So he asked the man how the architect made the outside of the temple and the man said: “Why, he made it out of his head; and he had books besides.” The “books besides” repelled Louis: anybody could do that; but the “made it out of his head” fascinated him.
How could a man make so beautiful a building out of his head? What a great man he must be; what a wonderful man. Then and there Louis made up his mind to become an architect and make beautiful buildings “out of his head.” He confined this resolve to the man. But the man said:
“I don’t know about that. You got to know a lot first. You got to have an education. Of course us mechanics has our books too. That’s the way we lay out stairs, rails and things like that. But you got to have more brains, more experience, more education and more books, especially more books, to be an archeetec. Can yer father keep yer at school long enough?”
“Yes; he says he’ll keep me at school until I’m twenty-one if I wish.”
“Well, that being so, yer may stand a chance of coming out ahead, but I honestly don’t think yer have the right kind of brains. That faraway look in yer eyes makes me think yer won’t be practical, and y’ got to be practical. I’m a foreman and that’s as far as I’ll get, and I’ve done work under a good many archeetecs; and some of them that’s practical ain’t much else. And some of them that’s fairly practical has so much education from books that they gets awful fussy, and are hard to get on with.” The latter part of this monologue interested Louis rather faintly, for he’d made up his mind. He thanked the foreman who said in parting: “Well, I dunno—mebbe.”
Shortly before his father left Boston for Chicago, Louis confided to him his heart’s desire. The father seemed pleased, greatly pleased, that his son’s ambition was centering on something definite. He “allowed,” as they used to say in New England, that Architecture was a great art, the mother of all the arts, and its practice a noble profession, adding a word or two about Michelangelo. Then he offered a counter proposal that made Louis gasp. It was none other than this: That Louis was fond of the farm and the open, that he had shown himself a natural farmer with ready mastery of detail of common farming. Why not go further. After proper preparation he would send Louis to an agricultural college, he said, and thus Louis would be equipped as a scientific farmer. Louis was dazzled. The word scientific was electrical. Before him arose the woods, the fields, the cattle, the crops, the great grand open world as a narcotic phantom of delight. The father was eloquent concerning blooded stock, plant cross-fertilization, the chemistry of soils and fertilizers, underdrainage, and so forth; Louis wavered. He sat long in silence, on his father’s knee, lost to the world. Then he said: “No: I have made up my mind.”
And thus it was agreed that Louis should remain in Boston to complete his General Education; after that to a Technical School; and, some day—Abroad.
During the years preceding his decision, Louis, in practice, was essentially scatterbrained. His many and varied activities and preoccupations, physical, mental, emotional, his keen power of observation, his insatiable hunger for knowledge at first hand, his temperamental responses to externals, his fleeting mystic trances, his utterly childlike flashes of intuition, his welcoming of new worlds, opening upon him one after another, his perception that they must grow larger and larger, his imagination, unknown to him as such; all these things, impenetrable to him in their vast significance within the gigantic and diverse world of men and things and thoughts and acts, a world as yet sealed tight to him; all these things seemed to exist within him formless, aimless, a disconnected miscellany rich in impulse but devoid of order, of form, of intention.
Yet this was not precisely the fact. It was an ostensible fact, objectively, a non-fact, subjectively; for a presiding order, a primal impulse, was governing and shaping him through his own marvel at manifestations of power, his constant wonder at what men could do; at men’s power to do what they willed to do; and deeper than this moved a power he had heard in the Song of Spring, and which awakened within the glory of the sunrise.
All this was vague enough, to be sure, but his memory was becoming tenacious and retroactive. Little given to introspection, as such, he was in daily conduct and appearance much like any boy, though perhaps he had a more stubborn will than is usual. His aversion from schools and books had been normal enough, becaused they failed in appeal. Nevertheless he began to swing around to an idea that there might be something useful to him in books, regardless of teachers; and this idea was vivified when he was transferred to the new Rice Grammar School building, the lightness and brightness and cleanliness of which put him at once in exceeding good humor.
True to form he reacted to these cheerful externals, and at once became filled with a new eagerness. A cloud seemed to pass away from his brain, a certain inhibition seemed to relax its hold upon him. As by the waving of a magic wand, he made a sudden swerve in his course, and became an earnest, almost fanatical student of books, in the light and joy of the new schoolhouse. Teachers were secondary; and in habit he became almost a recluse. For the idea had clarified that in books might be found a concentration, an increase in power; that books might be—and he later said they were—storehouses of what men had done, an explanation of their power to do, and that the specific knowledge stored within them might be used as tools of the mind, as men used tools of the hand. Louis saw consequences with extreme rapidity and daring once the first light of an initial idea broke upon him. His enthusiasms were pramagtic. He lost no time, once he saw an objective. His grammar-book in particular fascinated him. Here for the first time in all his schooling a light began to shine within a book and illumine his brain. Here opened up to him, ever more startling, ever more inspiriting, the structure of the language he spoke; its whys and wherefores. Here opened, ever enlarging, a world of things said, and to be said. The rigid rules became plastic as he progressed, then they became fluent; grammar passed into romance; a dead book became a living thing. He could not go fast enough. When would he reach the end?
And as the end approached nearer and nearer, there came forth from the book as a living presence, as a giant from the world of enchantment, with shining visage, man’s power of speech. Louis saw it all, but it left him feeble. He had taken grammar at one dose. As usual his imagination had far outsped any possibility of reasonable accomplishment. For Louis, as usual, saw too much at one time. He saw, at a glance, ends that would require a lifetime of disciplined endeavor to reach. And so, in a measure, it was with his other studies, though not so ardently. There was little romance to be found in his arithmetic. It was in the main material and philistine. Yet he saw use in it. He accepted it as a daily task and plodded. It was not his fault but his misfortune that it was handed to him dry. Geography he took to kindly. He could visualize it as a diagram and it extended, on paper, his boundaries far and wide. Topographically and racially he could not see into it, even though he was informed, for instance, that the Japanese and Chinese were half-civilized. He asked what civilized meant and was told that we were civilized. There were various other things in the geography that were not clear; he found difficulty in making images of what he saw in the book. In his history book he was lied to shamefully, but he did not know it. Anyway, he had to take some things on faith. The history book did not interest him greatly because the people described did not seem human like the people he knew, and the story was mostly about wars. He got the idea that patriotism always meant fighting, and that the other side was always in the wrong.
As to compositions, the pupils had to write one every so often, on a given topic. The first subject for Louis was “The Battle of Hastings.” He went at this dolefully, sought refuge in the encyclopedia, and in wabbly English produced a two-page essay weakly-hesitant and valueless; a mere task. He was marked low. The next subject was “A Winter Holiday in Boston.” Louis filled the air with snowflakes, merry bells, laughter, movement and cross movement, amusing episodes and accidents, all joyous, all lively. In simple boyish English, he made a hearty story of it, a word-picture; yes, the suggestion even of a prose poem, for it had structure. Within it was a dominant idea of winter that conveyed a sensation of color, of form. Louis was happy. He had hard work to confine himself to four pages. He was marked high. He was commended before the class. But the topics seldom fired him; as a rule they were academic, arid, artificial, having no relation to his life experiences, concerning which he might have said something worthwhile had he been given the chance. Another feature of the curriculum that went against the grain with Louis was the course in declamation, or “speaking pieces.” For Louis had a streak of bashfulness in his makeup, which, though invisible in his former street fights, came painfully into view when he must face the class and “speak out loud.” The ensuing torture of self-consciousness made him angry and rebellious. Besides, he had his opinions concerning various “pieces” and was not in the least backward in venturing them. He ridiculed the “Village Blacksmith” unmercifully.
His pet aversion was “Old Ironsides,” and it befell one day that he was to speak this very piece. As he approached the platform, he saw red; the class was invisible, no bashfulness now; teacher even, scarcely visible. His mind was made up; he mounted the platform, faced about; and in instant desperate acrimony, he shrieked: “Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!!!!!!” The class roared; teacher stopped him at once; sent him to his seat. She left the room. Louis boiled in his seat. In the hubbub he heard: “Now yer going to get it.” “Serves yer right.” “Yer made a fool of teacher.” “Serves yer right.” “Fatty’ll fix yer.” The teacher, Miss Blank, returning, stilled the storm, and said calmly: “Louis Sullivan, you are wanted in Mr. Wheelock’s office.” Mr. Wheelock, head master—called “Fatty” for short—was round, of middle height, kindly, with something of the cherub in his face. He wore a blond beard, had rather high color, merry blue eyes, a full forehead, sparsely covered with hair. He appeared not over thirty-five, had served in the army, and was judicial, considerate and human in his dealings.
As Louis entered he saw, not this Mr. Wheelock, but a Mr. Wheelock, gray of face, sinister of eye, holding in his left hand a long rattan. “Miss Blank tells me you have grossly insulted her before the class. What have you to say for yourself?”
Louis was fearless and aggressive by nature. He had crossed his Rubicon. He made a manly apology, wholly sincere as regarded Miss Blank. This cleared the ground but not the issue. He saw the rattan, and with steady eye and nerve he quickly wove about it his plan of action. The rod should never touch him; it was to be a battle of wits. He boldly made his opening with the statement that he regarded the poem as bunkum. Mr. Wheelock sneered. He then went on to take the poem to pieces, line by line, stanza by stanza. Mr. Wheelock looked puzzled; he eyed Louis quizzically. He edged about in his chair. Louis went on, more and more drastically. Mr. Wheelock’s eyes began to twinkle, calm returned to his face, he dropped the rod. He laughed heartily: “Where in the world did you dig that up?” Then Louis let go, he waxed eloquent, he spread out his views—so long suppressed; he pleaded for the open, for honesty of thought for the lifting of a veil that hid things, for freedom of thought, for the right of interpretation, for freedom of utterance. He passionately unbosomed his longings. The head master, now sitting chin in hand, looked steadily at Louis, with grave, sad face. As Louis ceased, the master remained silent for a moment, then pulled himself together, relaxed, chuckled, and patting Louis on the shoulder said: “That was a pretty fine stump-speech, young man. When you got through with Holmes, you left his poem as tattered as his ensign. As for the rest: Irish accounts for that. I’m glad we had it out though. I might have thrashed you in anger. Go back to your class now, and hereafter be considerate of a woman’s feelings.” Louis returned to his room; before all the class he made full amends. Then, in his seat, he set to with a book. His plunge into grammar had not been in vain.
Thus Louis worked on and on, all by himself, as it were, digging into the solid vein of knowledge as a solitary miner digs; washing the alluvial sands of knowledge as a miner sifts—a young prospector grub-staked by an absentee provider now settled on the shores of a vast Lake far in the West.
Living again with his grandparents Louis felt at home once more. He had respites from the city bareness and baldness. He studied in the evenings, in the sitting room, unmindful of the family doings. He lost interest in playmates; waved aside all little girls as nuisances and inferior creatures—they became nonexistent. He rose early, at all seasons and in all weathers, before the family were awake, walked the mile to the depot, took the train to Boston, walked a mile to breakfast and another mile to school. Many a night he was awakened by the rattling sash, and listened to the sharp wind moaning, groaning, shrieking, whistling through the crevices with many a siren rise and fall, from the depths of sorrow to the heights of madness, from double forte to piannissimo as this weird orchestra of the countryside lulled him again to sleep. And many a morning, in pitch darkness, he lit his little lamp, broke the skin of ice at the pitcher’s top, washed in arctic waters, donned his clothing, neatly folded over a chair as Grandmamma had taught him—his stockings even, carefully turned in for orderliness, then left the house still in darkness and silence, to break his way, it may be, through fresh-fallen snow, knee-deep on the level, and as yet without a trail, his woolen cap drawn down, his woolen mittens well on, his books bound with a leather strap, held snug under the arm of his pea-jacket as the dim light at the depot shone nearer, and a distant double-toot announced the oncoming train, and the blinding headlight that shortly roared into view as he stood, waiting, on the platform.
Yet this was not heroism, but routine. It was an accepted part of the day’s doings, accepted without a murmur of other thought in days long since gone by.
Thus Louis worked, in gluttonous introspection, as one with a fixed idea, an unalterable purpose, whose goal lay beyond the rim of his horizon, and beyond the narrow confines of the casual and sterile thought of the day. Hence Louis was bound to be graduated with honors, as he was, the following June of 1870. There and then he received in pride, as a scholar, his first and last diploma. Never thereafter did he regard life with the gravity, the seriousness and the futility of a cloistered monk. That summer, he spent part of vacation time on the farm, and part of it within the primeval forest of Brown’s Track in the northern part of the State of New York. On his return to Boston in September, he passed the examinations, and at the age of fourteen entered the English High School, in Bedford Street—there to expand.