Meadow Grass | Page 3

sometimes quaked with fear of dark and
lonesomeness; and then we came trooping back at the sound of the bell,
untamed, happy little savages, ready to settle, with a long breath, to the
afternoon's drowsy routine. Arrant nonsense that! the boundary of
British America and the conjugation of the verb to be! Who that might
loll away the hours upon a bank in silken ease, needed aught even of
computation or the tongues? He alone had inherited the earth.
All the little figures flitting through those tranquil early dramas are so
sharply drawn, so brightly colored still! I meet Melissa Crane

sometimes nowadays, a prosperous matron with space enough on her
broad back for the very largest plaid ever woven; but her present
identity is hazy and unreal. I see instead, with a sudden throb of
memory, the little Melissa, who, one recess, accepted a sugared
doughnut from me, and said, with a quaint imitation of old folks'
manner,--
"I think your mother will be a real good cook, if she lives!"
I hear of Susie Marden, who went out West, married, and grew up with
the country in great magnificence; but to me she is and ever will be the
little girl who made seventy pies, one Thanksgiving time, thereby
earning the somewhat stinted admiration of those among us who could
not cook. Many a great deed, tacitly promised in that springtime, never
came to pass; many a brilliant career ingloriously ended. There was
Sam Marshall. He could do sums to the admiration of class and teacher,
and, Cuvier-like, evolve an entire flock from Colburn's two geese and a
half. His memory was prodigious. He could name the Presidents, bound
the States and Territories, and rattle off the list of prepositions so fast
that you could almost see the spark-shower from his rushing wheels of
thought. It was an understood thing among us, when Sam was in his
teens, that he should at least enter the Senate; perhaps he would even be
President, and scatter offices, like halfpence, among his scampering
townsmen. But to-day he patiently does his haying--by hand! and "goes
sleddin'" in the winter. The Senate is as far from him as the Polar Star,
and I question whether he could even bear the crucial test of two geese
and a half. Yet I still look upon him with a thrill of awe, as the man
selected by the popular vote to represent us in fame's Valhalla, and
mysteriously defeated by some unexpected move of the "unseen hand
at a game."
There were a couple of boys such good comrades as never to be happy
save when together. They cared only for the games made for two; all
their goods were tacitly held in common, and a tradition still lives that
David, when a new teacher asked his exact age, claimed his comrade's
birthday, and then wondered why everybody laughed. They had a way
of wandering off together to the woods, on Saturday. mornings, when

the routine of chores could be hurried through, and always they bore
with them a store of eggs, apples, or sweet corn, to be cooked in happy
seclusion. All this raw material was stolen from the respective haylofts
and gardens at home, though, as the fathers owned, with an
appreciative grin, the boys might have taken it openly for the asking.
That, however, would so have alloyed the charm of gypsying that it
was not to be thought of for a moment; and they crept about on their
foraging expeditions with all the caution of a hostile tribe. Blessed
fathers and mothers to wink at the escapade, and happy boys, wise
chiefly in their longing to be free! We had a theory that Jonathan and
David would go into business together. Perhaps we thought of them in
the same country store, their chairs tilted on either side of the air-tight
stove, telling stories, in the intervals of custom, as they apparently did
in their earlier estate. For, shy as they were in general company, they
chatted together with an intense earnestness all day long; and it was one
of the stock questions in our neighborhood, when the social light
burned low,--
"What under the sun do you s'pose Dave and Jont find to talk about?"
Alas! again the world had builded foolishly; for with early manhood,
they fell in love with the same round-cheeked school-teacher. Jonathan
married her, after what wrench of feeling I know not; and the other fled
to the town, whence he never returned save for the briefest visit at
Thanksgiving or Christmas time. The stay-at-home lad is a warm
farmer, and the little school-teacher a mother whose unlined face shows
the record of a placid life; but David cannot know even this, save by
hearsay, for he never sees them.