From the Bottom Up | Page 3

At the age of ten, I entered the parochial school of the Episcopal
Church; but the pedagogue of that period delegated his pedagogy to a
monitor, and the monitor to one of the biggest boys, and the school ran
itself. The only thing I remember about it is the daily rushes over the
benches and seats, and the number of boys about my size I was pitted
against in fistic battles. At the close of my first school day I came home
with one of my eyes discoloured and one sleeve torn out of my jacket,
as a result of an encounter not down on the programme. The ignominy
of such a spectacle irritated my father, and I was thoroughly whipped
for my inability to defend myself better. It was an ex parte judgment
which a look at the other fellow might have modified.
After a few weeks at school I begged my father to allow me to devote
my mornings as well as my evenings to the selling of newspapers. The
extra work added a little to my income and preserved my looks. If there
was any misery in my life at this time I neither knew nor felt it. I was
living the life of the average boy of my neighbourhood, and had
nothing to complain of. Of course, I was in a chronic condition of
hunger, but so was every other boy in the alley and on the street. It was
quite an event for me occasionally to go bird-nesting with the son of
the chief baker of the town. He usually brought a loaf along as toll. My
knowledge of the woods was better than his, for necessity took me
there for fuel for our hearth. Sometimes the baker's son brought a
companion of his class. These boys were well-fed and well-clothed,
and it was when we spent whole days together that I noticed the
disparity. They were "quality"--the baker was called "Mr.," wore a tall
hat on Sundays, and led the psalm singing in the Presbyterian Church.
In the summer time, when the church windows were open, the leader's
voice could be heard a mile away. My childish misgivings about the
distribution of the good things of life were quieted in the Sunday
School by the dictum: "It is the will of God." My first knowledge of
God was that He was a big man in the skies who dealt out to the church

people good things and to others experiences to make them good. The
Bible was to me God's book, and a thing to be handled reverently. We
had a copy, but it was coverless, loose and incomplete. Every morning
I used to take it tenderly in my hands and pretend to read some of it,
"just for luck!" My Sunday School teacher informed me that work was
a curse that God had put upon the world and from what I saw around
me I naturally concluded that life was more of a curse than a
blessing--that was the theory. My father, however, never seemed to be
able to get enough of the curse to appease our hunger.
[Illustration: Where Mr. Irvine Spent His Boyhood and the pig-sty that
never had a pig]
The lack of class-conscious envy did not prevent an occasional
questioning of God's arrangement of the universe; occasionally, in the
winter time, when my feet were bleeding, cut by the frozen pavements,
I wondered why God somehow or other could not help me to a pair of
shoes. Nevertheless, I reverently worshipped the God who had
consigned me to such pitiless and poorly paid labour, and believed that,
being the will of God, it was surely for my best good.
My first hero worship came to me while a newsboy. A former resident
of the town had returned from America with a modicum of fame. He
had left a labourer, and returned a "Mr." He delivered a lecture in the
town hall, and, out of curiosity, the town turned out to hear him. I was
at the door with my papers. It was a very cold night, and I was
shivering as I stood on one foot leaning against the door post, the sole
of the other foot resting upon my bare leg. But nobody wanted papers
at a lecture. The doorkeeper took pity upon me, and, to my
astonishment, invited me inside. There on a bench, with my back to the
wall and my feet dangling six inches from the floor, I listened to a
lecture about a "rail-splitter." It took me many years to find out what a
rail-splitter was; but the rail-splitter's name was Lincoln, and he
became my first hero.
From the selling of papers on the streets of Antrim, I went to work on a
farm,