Being a Boy | Page 7

are always dressed up, and a
great many other things of which he has a very dim notion. And then a
boy, whom John knows, rides by in a wagon with his father, and the

boy makes a face at John, and John returns the greeting with a twist of
his own visage and some symbolic gestures. All these things take time.
The work of cutting down the big weeds gets on slowly, although it is
not very disagreeable, or would not be if it were play. John imagines
that yonder big thistle is some whiskered villain, of whom he has read
in a fairy book, and he advances on him with "Die, ruffian!" and
slashes off his head with the bill-hook; or he charges upon the rows of
mullein-stalks as if they were rebels in regimental ranks, and hews
them down without mercy. What fun it might be if there were only
another boy there to help. But even war, single handed, gets to be
tiresome. It is dinner-time before John finishes the weeds, and it is
cow-time before John has made much impression on the garden.
This garden John has no fondness for. He would rather hoe corn all day
than work in it. Father seems to think that it is easy work that John can
do, because it is near the house! John's continual plan in this life is to
go fishing. When there comes a rainy day, he attempts to carry it out.
But ten chances to one his father has different views. As it rains so that
work cannot be done out-doors, it is a good time to work in the garden.
He can run into the house between the heavy showers. John
accordingly detests the garden; and the only time he works briskly in it
is when he has a stent set, to do so much weeding before the Fourth of
July. If he is spry, he can make an extra holiday the Fourth and the day
after. Two days of gunpowder and ball-playing! When I was a boy, I
supposed there was some connection between such and such an amount
of work done on the farm and our national freedom. I doubted if there
could be any Fourth of July if my stent was not done. I, at least, worked
for my Independence.

III
THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING
There are so many bright spots in the life of a farm-boy, that I
sometimes think I should like to live the life over again; I should
almost be willing to be a girl if it were not for the chores. There is a
great comfort to a boy in the amount of work he can get rid of doing. It
is sometimes astonishing how slow he can go on an errand, --he who
leads the school in a race. The world is new and interesting to him, and
there is so much to take his attention off, when he is sent to do anything.

Perhaps he himself couldn't explain why, when he is sent to the
neighbor's after yeast, he stops to stone the frogs; he is not exactly cruel,
but be wants to see if he can hit 'em. No other living thing can go so
slow as a boy sent on an errand. His legs seem to be lead, unless he
happens to espy a woodchuck in an adjoining lot, when he gives chase
to it like a deer; and it is a curious fact about boys, that two will be a
great deal slower in doing anything than one, and that the more you
have to help on a piece of work the less is accomplished. Boys have a
great power of helping each other to do nothing; and they are so
innocent about it, and unconscious. "I went as quick as ever I could,"
says the boy: his father asks him why he did n't stay all night, when he
has been absent three hours on a ten-minute errand. The sarcasm has no
effect on the boy.
Going after the cows was a serious thing in my day. I had to climb a
hill, which was covered with wild strawberries in the season. Could any
boy pass by those ripe berries? And then in the fragrant hill pasture
there were beds of wintergreen with red berries, tufts of columbine,
roots of sassafras to be dug, and dozens of things good to eat or to
smell, that I could not resist. It sometimes even lay in my way to climb
a tree to look for a crow's nest, or to swing in the top, and to try if I
could see the steeple of the village church. It became very important
sometimes for me to see that steeple; and in the midst